Speckle reduction of synthetic aperture imaging ladar based on wavelength characteristics

Abstract

We propose a speckle-reduction method based on wavelength characteristics of speckle effect in synthetic aperture imaging ladar (SAIL). The return signal, which is the back scattering field with speckle effect from the rough surface of target, can be integrated over N chirp periods and heterodyne detected with a local-oscillator signal. After performing image processing respectively, the final image can be regarded as the incoherent superposition of the N sub-images. Numerical simulations indicate the effectiveness of this method. Our research may facilitate practical applications of SAIL.