ABSOLUTE DISTANCE MEASUREMENTS USING TWO-MODE LASER TELEMETRY

Michel Lintz (1) , Clément Courde (1) , Alain Brillet (1) , Catherine Nary Man (1)

1 ARTEMIS - Astrophysique Relativiste Théories Expériences Métrologie Instrumentation Signaux

A novel laser ranging method is described that uses a two-mode laser source, and detection of the phase of the return beam. The design eliminates the cyclic error usually associated with phase measurements and provides unambiguous, absolute distance determination. Measurements of an 8m path are obtained at a beat frequency of 13 GHz. We analyse the 1µm stability of the data obtained with this preliminary implementation, and expect that an improved version will allow accuracies well below 1 µm, for the kilometer-scale distances involved in satellite formation flight.

Mots clés: Télémétrie; Laser; Polarisation; interférence

Domaines: Optique / photonique

Michel Lintz, Clément Courde, Alain Brillet, Catherine Nary Man. ABSOLUTE DISTANCE MEASUREMENTS USING TWO-MODE LASER TELEMETRY. ICSO 2008, International Conference on Space Optics, Oct 2008, Toulouse, France. ⟨hal-00544727⟩