Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE), Wright State University, 2018, Electrical Engineering

Synthetic aperture ladar (SAL) is similar to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in that it can create range/cross-range slant plane images of the illuminated scatters; however, SAL has wavelengths 10,000x smaller than SAR enabling a relatively narrow real aperture, diffraction limited beam widths. The relatively narrow real aperture resolutions allow for multiple slant planes to be created for a single target with reasonable range/aperture combinations. These multiple slant planes can be projected into a single slant plane projections (as in SAR). It can also be displayed as a 3-D image with asymmetric resolutions, diffraction limited in the dimension orthogonal to the SAL baseline. Multiple images with diversity in angle orthogonal to SAL baselines can be used to synthesize resolution with tomographic techniques and enhance the diffraction limited resolution. The goal of this research is to explore methods to enhance the diffraction limited resolutions with multiple observations and/or multiple slant plane imaging with SAL systems. Specifically, metrics associated with the information content of the tomographic based 3 dimensional reconstructions of SAL intensity imagery will be investigated to see how it changes as a function of number of slant planes in the SAL images and number of elevation observations are varied. Approved for public release, distribution unlimited (APRS-RY-18-0785)

Committee: Arnab Shaw Ph.D. (Advisor); Lawrence Barnes M.S. (Committee Member); Joshua Ash Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering