Eye-safe laser illuminators for long-reach LIDAR and gated imaging in harsh weather conditions

Autonomous driving and automated ships are in increasing demand and the performance for pattern recognition and safety functions are essential. Harsh weather conditions lower the atmospheric transmission for useable eye-safe wavelengths and water vapor peaks prevent most laser light propagation for longer distances. In LIDAR application this problem can be solved with increased peak power. However, high peak power solutions with high repetition rate do not exist or they are bulky and expensive. Moreover, not all applications need the highest peak powers or high repetition rates. We present a collection of eye-safe LIDAR laser sources with varying laser pulse parameters for demanding conditions. Wavelengths ranging from 1400 nm to 1560 nm with peak powers from a few Watts to up to 18 kW and repetition rates up to 100 kHz. Naturally, for a good temporal resolution a short pulse operation is necessary and best sources presented here produce sub-10 ns pulses. Such high peak power, high repetition rate lasers present the state-of-the-art performance for long range LIDAR, enabling hundreds of meters detection distance in poor weather, currently unavailable in earlier commercial solutions.