Coherent Pulse-Compression Lidar Based on 90-Degree Optical Hybrid

A coherent pulse-compression lidar system based on a 90-degree optical hybrid is demonstrated in this paper. In amplitude modulation (AM) mode, the returned RF chirp signal will be influenced by a random phase difference between local oscillator and echo light, causing fluctuations in the ranging results, and as a result the detection probability is small. By using the 90-degree optical hybrid, two orthogonal complementary signals are obtained to stabilize the result so as to increase the detection probability. We performed an experiment to measure the distance of a white printed wall which is about 65 m away from the system. The detection probability increased from 65% to 99.88%, and the precision is improved from 0.42 m to 0.27 m.