A comparison of laser based ranging systems for AR/C category 1: Hardware

This paper will present some aspects of the effect of inherent laser effects on the performance of CW-Tone modulated and FM-CW laser ranging techniques. It will be shown that performance of these techniques is affected in different ways by inherent laser characteristics and previous comparisons of the techniques should be modified to reflect more realistic conditions. An overall survey of laser ranging will be given to place the CW and FM-CW techniques in perspective. It will be seen that the newly introduced FM-CW laser radar has potentially far superior performance to CW-Tone modulated systems now proposed for use in space rendezvous and capture systems.