Atmospheric obscurant penetrating target observation system with range gating
First Claim
1. Apparatus for use in a target observation system for clearing obscurants from a scene to be observed, said system including a source of pulses of illuminant energy for illuminating said scene, comprisinggated receiver means for receiving illuminant energy from said pulses reflected back from said scene, and providing an image in accordance therewith,gating means for providing a gating pulse to said gated receiver means to receive said illuminant energy over the width of said gating pulse,delay means for delaying said gating pulse in accordance with the travel time required for a pulse of illuminant energy to travel from said source to a range slice of said scene and back to said gated receiver means so that said gated receiver means is disabled during said travel time from receiving said reflected illuminated energy,thereby providing an image of range slice cleared of said obscurants,adjustment means for adjusting said delay means in accordance with successive range slices of said scene, andisolating and assembling means cooperative with said adjustment means for isolating images of said successive range slices and assembling said images into an image of said scene cleared of said scene obscurants.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The system includes a television camera or an optical viewer device with a gated image intensifier input. A short intense laser pulse is transmitted to illuminate the scene. The image intensifier is gated on after a time delay equal to the round trip transit time of the pulse from a range slice of interest. The image intensifier is gated on for a time interval equal to the width of the laser pulse. In the television camera embodiment, one laser pulse per frame is transmitted and successive range slices are observed during successive frames by successively increasing the time delay. The range slice images are stored in a buffer and read out to a television display. In the optical viewer device embodiment, a segmented horizontally sliced electro-optical shutter is disposed adjacent the phosphor output of the image intensifier to transmit successive range slice information to an eyepiece of the device for viewing by an observer. The optical viewer device may be mounted on a helmet with an inclinometer on the helmet providing signals to program the segmented shutter.
42 Citations
13 Claims
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1. Apparatus for use in a target observation system for clearing obscurants from a scene to be observed, said system including a source of pulses of illuminant energy for illuminating said scene, comprising
gated receiver means for receiving illuminant energy from said pulses reflected back from said scene, and providing an image in accordance therewith, gating means for providing a gating pulse to said gated receiver means to receive said illuminant energy over the width of said gating pulse, delay means for delaying said gating pulse in accordance with the travel time required for a pulse of illuminant energy to travel from said source to a range slice of said scene and back to said gated receiver means so that said gated receiver means is disabled during said travel time from receiving said reflected illuminated energy, thereby providing an image of range slice cleared of said obscurants, adjustment means for adjusting said delay means in accordance with successive range slices of said scene, and isolating and assembling means cooperative with said adjustment means for isolating images of said successive range slices and assembling said images into an image of said scene cleared of said scene obscurants.
Specification