Patent ID: 7821619

Claim:
A LADAR system for coherently imaging a target within a volume, comprising: a laser transmitter, said transmitter illuminating said volume with a laser beam modulated with a frequency; a computer; a receiver having isothermal contours, said receiver receiving calibration reflections of said laser beam from a calibration reflector within said volume at a known location, said receiver further comprising: a clock for distributing time stamps within said receiver, said time stamps referencing a time interval to a time reference; a plurality of lenses mechanically coupled to a frame, each lens of said plurality of lenses having an optical field of view, said plurality of lenses combining to form an optical far field, said far field oriented to cover said volume; a plurality of detectors, one detector of said plurality of detectors coupled to each lens of said plurality of lenses, each detector of said plurality of detectors having an output voltage after a delay, said delay measured from an arrival time said calibration reflection impinges upon each lens of said plurality of lenses, each detector of said plurality of detectors coupled to a local oscillator by a path, said local oscillator tuned to said frequency, said path and said delay inducing a relative phase shift in said output voltage with respect to said arrival time of said calibration reflection; a plurality of analog to digital converters for converting said output voltage from each detector of said plurality of detectors into a corresponding plurality of digital detector voltages, said digital detector voltages stored in said computer to compute said relative phase shift for each digital detector voltage of said plurality of digital detector voltages with respect to one of said digital detector voltages during a calibration step.