Pacer’s R&D team was involved in the development of a ground based laser range finder with a high sensitivity over a long distance.
The company embarked on a project to develop a new laser range finding system which could be mounted to an existing piece of military equipment. The purpose of this product was to extend the capability of a laser targeting device by adding the possibility of utilising the laser pulse produced by the targeting device to measure the distance to the target.
Since the laser targeting device was ground-based and handheld, the additional receiver component was required to be lightweight and compact, within strict dimensional limits.
Limited time and resources meant that the customer sought support from a flexible and agile partner to further develop the product within a tight timeframe. Recognising our 30+ years pedigree in optoelectronics, they turned to Pacer’s team of highly skilled engineers to develop the laser rangefinder, aligning with the stringent requirements and technical specifications.
Laser specialist and project lead, Stuart Sendall comments: “Designating up to 10km requires a significant amount of energy via a huge wall of photons within a short period of time. We needed to be able to consider the huge optical dynamic range required whilst managing the atmospheric backscatter in the form of particles, sand, dust, and water in the air. Equally, we recognised that we couldn’t design a solution that was too sensitive, whereby false returns from atmospheric conditions were being distributed. Fundamentally, we needed to design an electrical circuit that could manage the effects of this wide optical dynamic range and the consequences this could have on amplified saturation and false alarms triggered by atmospheric backscatter.”
The lens design also proved challenging, with a extremely limited space constraints. However the Pacer team successfully addressed the optical, electronic and mechanical challenges as well as all environmental tests in this development of a ground based laser range finder.
Pacer’s Design & Build services enabled the completion the development of this ground based laser range finder