Lidar has been widely used in underwater detection, survey, and seabed mapping. However, the performance of underwater lidar is deteriorated by scattering. Scattering not only contributes to attenuation but also worsens ranging accuracy or imaging contrast. Therefore, it was important to suppress scattering in underwater detection. We present investigations of applying a spiral phase plate (SPP) as a spatial filter to suppress scattering in an underwater lidar system. An SPP was inserted in the echo path to separate target-reflected signals from scattering clutters, because, in the echo, the target-reflected light maintained spatial coherence and was converted into an optical vortex ring after passing through the SPP, while the scattering clutters lost their spatial coherence and cannot be converted to the optical vortex but remained a centrally stronger distribution according to the Mie scattering law. A mask was produced by coating a glass sheet with opaque paint, leaving only a transparent ring for light on the optical vortex ring to pass through. Experimentally, the response of the light in the center of the vortex to the RF modulation frequency decreased with the increase of attenuation length, so it was mainly scattered light, while the light on the vortex was measured to maintain RF frequency modulation at high attenuation length, so it was dominated by signal light. The ranging results showed that the ranging error was significantly reduced in a turbid medium by blocking scattering clutters inside and outside the vortex. Moreover, a high-order SPP was more effective in reducing ranging errors. We reduced the ranging error from 30 cm to 6.6 cm with a 24-order SPP when the attenuation length was 15.
Broadband light absorbers are attractive for their applications in photodetection and thermal detectors. Metal-black coatings have been experimentally proven to have broadband light absorption characteristic. A large area and broadband gold-black coating was fabricated by a low-cost but effective sputtering process. The gold-black films exhibited reduced reflection of 4.81%, 2.48% and 1.93% for sputtering pressure of 50, 65 and 80 Pa in 300-800 nm spectral range, and their size reached 4- inches. A three-dimensional nanocone-like array model was proposed for the gold-black films. Then, the nanocone array of this model was embedded with many gold nanoparticles due to the rough surface of the gold-black films. The results indicated this proposed model of nanocone-like array embedded with nanoparticles can be a good tool to design broadband gold-black absorbers.
KEYWORDS: Signal to noise ratio, Infrared radiation, Signal detection, Interference (communication), Oscillators, Signal processing, Phase measurement, Sensors, Modulation, Reflectivity
Measurement of infrared radiation with low intensity in level of 10−6 W / cm2 is difficult. Because both background and the components used in the measurement system will generate infrared radiation, which results in a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Except of using photodetector with high sensitivity, weak signal processing method is crucial. In this paper an infrared radiation intensity measurement setup based on intercomparison method is introduced. A reflective chopper is used to modulate the detected infrared radiation. By using a MCT Detector with Dewar the infrared signal is transferred to electric signal. To process the weak modulated signal with strong noise an extended Duffing oscillator is introduced. Both amplitude and phase of the modulation signal with known frequency is obtained by step-time-delay technique (equivalent to phase shifting in frequency-domain). The measurement error can be maintained below 16.1% even when the SNR is as low as -67 dB. The corresponding received infrared radiation power is only 1.05×10-9 W. The proposed signal processing method shows superior ability and great potential applications compared with commonly used method, such as lock-in amplification.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.