Multiarray digital coherent combing technology for real-time target speckle correction in heterodyne detection

The practical application of active laser heterodyne detection is significantly constrained by the decoherence effects induced by target speckles. Therefore, this study proposes a multiarray digital coherent combing method based on the sequential algorithm (SA) for real-time target speckle correction in heterodyne detection. Experiments show that the SA can compensate for phase differences between the array heterodyne signals without any prior knowledge, thereby achieving real-time and accurate compensation for target speckles. Thus, the proposed method contributes to the development of active laser heterodyne detection applications, such as synthetic aperture lidar, long-distance coherent lidar, and laser vibrometry.