ATTOLLO ENGINEERING, LLC SBIR Phase I Award, March 2020

One of the challenges facing the Air Force and the other services is seeing both adversaries and allies through the canopy of trees and forests. The general solution is to use an expensive, heavy LADAR system that limits its use to large vehicles. Attollo Engineering proposes to use a Short-wavelength infrared (IR) range-gated camera to provide this ability in a small package. The system would provide a pulsed illumination using a laser source, and the SWIR camera would take snapshots at different distance slices. Attollo has developed a SWIR camera that is capable of exposure times < 20 ns. A 20 ns time slice provides a 10 ft (~3 m) distance slice. By stitching the slices together, a full 3D image is assembled, providing a full view below the canopy. By using range-gating, we ignore all reflections except for the range that we are interested in, eliminating reflections not only from the top of the canopy but also from lower vegetation not within our range of interest. Using a wavelength region outside of the visible and near infrared keeps the small drone covert and out of detection.