Miniaturized high signal-to-noise ratio optical air data system using a compact multi-axis parallel transceiver for airborne application

Abstract

We have developed a miniaturized multi-channel parallel optical air data system with high signal-to-noise ratio for airborne application. In the system, we designed a fiber amplifier with multi-channel high-energy output that was respectively used as the transmitting signals and a compact multi-axis transceiver with an entrance pupil diameter of 70 mm that was used to receive multi-channel signals simultaneously. We demonstrated the performance of our system both on ground and on board. On ground, the measured line-of-sight speed had an average error of 0.02 m/s and a standard deviation of 0.15 m/s. On board, the standard deviation between the true air speed, angle of attack, and angle of sideslip measured by our system and a commercial Swiss air data system was 1 kt, 0.68°, and 0.54°, respectively, and those standard deviation between our system and a system with the same design but employing multiple single-axis telescopes with entrance pupil diameter of 30 mm was 0.34 kt, 0.36°, and 0.28°, respectively. The signal-to-noise ratio of our system was 4.5 times higher than that of the system with small single-axis telescopes. Our system is very promising for airborne applications because of its small volume, high signal-to-noise ratio, and high data rate.