Imaging lidar employing transmitter referencing

摘要

An imaging lidar system is presented which utilizes internal or external transmitter beam pattern referencing for improved imaging lidar performance. In general, the present invention samples the laser output at or near the source to obtain a reference of the signal intensity distribution. This reference signal includes any anomalous spatial intensity distributions (associated with the output of the laser transmitter) which can then be discounted or subtracted out from the signals received from the target area of interest.