Limitations of synthetic aperture laser optical feedback imaging

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how amplitude and phase noise affect Synthetic Aperture Laser Optical Feedback Imaging, identifying noise types and proposing methods to mitigate their impact for improved imaging quality.

Contribution

It characterizes the origins and effects of amplitude and phase noise in SA LOFI systems and suggests noise reduction techniques applicable to various SA imaging modalities.

Findings

Amplitude noise acts as additive photon noise and can be reduced by longer measurement times.

Phase noise acts as multiplicative noise and can be mitigated through oversampling or multiple measurements.

The methods are applicable to all SA systems, including Radar, Laser, and Terahertz imaging.

Abstract

In this paper we study the origin and the effect of amplitude and phase noise on Laser Optical Feedback Imaging (LOFI) associated with Synthetic Aperture (SA) imaging system. Amplitude noise corresponds to photon noise and acts as an additive noise, it can be reduced by increasing the global measurement time. Phase noise can be divided in three families: random, sinusoidal and drift phase noise; we show that it acts as a multiplicative noise. We explain how we can reduce phase noise by making oversampling or multiple measurements depending on its type. This work can easily be extended to all SA systems (Radar, Laser or Terahertz), especially when raw holograms are acquired point by point.