Patent ID: 7248343

Claim:
A laser radar (LADAR) system for sensing a target, comprising: a laser for illuminating the target with a target signal waveform; a heterodyne detector array comprising an M×N array of detectors for detecting the target signal waveform reflected back from the target, each of the detectors producing a respective time domain signal for use in range doppler processing to sense the target; amplitude weighting processing circuitry that calculates a set of amplitude weighting coefficients, the amplitude weighting coefficients being proportional to the time domain signal amplitude for each of the detectors, wherein the amplitude weighting processing circuitry comprises: circuitry that calculates the amplitude of an imaging portion of the respective time domain signals; and a host processor which calculates amplitude-weighted coefficients based on the calculated amplitudes of the imaging portion of each of the respective time domain signals; and range doppler processing circuitry for forming a summation of the respective time domain signals using the amplitude weighting coefficients, and processing the summation to develop an output representing the target; wherein the circuitry that calculates the amplitude of the imaging portion of the respective time domain signals comprises: an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter which converts the time domain signal into a digital signal; an accumulator which sums the square of the imaging portion of each time domain signal; and a divider circuit which divides the square-root of the square of the imaging portion of each time domain signal by a constant false alarm rate (CFAR) threshold.