Sub-micron absolute distance measurements in sub-millisecond times with dual free-running femtosecond Er fiber-lasers

Published

September 12, 2011

Author(s)

Tze-An Lui, Nathan R. Newbury, Ian R. Coddington

Abstract

We demonstrate a simplified dual-comb lidar setup for precision absolute ranging that can achieve a ranging precision at a meter of 2 υm in 140 υs acquisition time. With averaging, the precision drops below 1 micron at 0.8 msec and below 200 nm at 20 ms. The system can measure the distance to multiple targets with negligible dead zones and a ranging ambiguity of 1 meter. The system is much simpler than a previous coherent dual-comb lidar because the two combs are replaced by free-running, saturable-absorber-based femtosecond Er fiber lasers, rather than tightly phase-locked combs, with the entire time base provided by a single 10-digit frequency counter. Despite the simpler design, the system provides a factor of three improved performance over the previous coherent dual comb lidar system.

Citation

Optics Express

Volume

19

Issue

19

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

distance measurement, frequency comb, LIDAR

Citation

Lui, T. , Newbury, N. and Coddington, I. (2011), Sub-micron absolute distance measurements in sub-millisecond times with dual free-running femtosecond Er fiber-lasers, Optics Express, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=908892 (Accessed April 25, 2024)