Multi-transmitter aperture synthesis is a method in which multiple transmitters can be used to improve resolution and contrast of distributed aperture systems. Such a system utilizes multiple transmitter locations to interrogate a target from multiple look angles thus increasing the angular spectrum content captured by the receiver aperture array. Furthermore, such a system can improve the contrast of sparsely populated receiver arrays by capturing field data in the region between sub-apertures by utilizing multiple transmitter locations. This paper discusses the theory behind multi-transmitter aperture synthesis and provides experimental verification that imagery captured using multiple transmitters will provide increased resolution.

Abstract-An optical true-time delay device that uses a binary counting system in a modified White cell is demonstrated. The switching engine uses four spherical mirrors and a three-state digital micromirror array. The delay part, as designed, provides 6 bits of delay ranging from 78 ps to 5 ns, using a combination of dielectric blocks for short delays and lens trains for longer ones. Long lens trains are folded for compactness. The authors describe the design and demonstrate two of the 6 bits of delays experimentally. Delays were accurate to within the measurement resolution of 1.25 ps. The insertion loss varied from 3.1-5.2 dB, depending on delay. It was found that the micromirrors do not contribute significantly to the loss.Index Terms-Array signal processing, beam steering, microelectromechanical devices, optical delay lines, optical signal processing, phased array radars.

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Multi-transmitter aperture synthesis provides aperture gain and improves effective aperture fill factor by shifting the received speckle field through the use of multiple transmitter locations. It is proposed that by utilizing methods based on shearing interferometry some low-order aberrations, such as defocus, can be found directly rather than through iterative algorithms. The current work describes the theory behind multi-transmitter aberration correction and describes experiments used to validate this method. Experimental results are shown which demonstrate the ability of such a sensor to solve directly for defocus and toric curvature in the captured field values.

Distributed aperture synthesis is an exciting technique for recovering high-resolution images from an array of small telescopes. Such a system requires optical field values measured at individual apertures to be phased together so that a single, high-resolution image can be synthesized. This paper describes the application of sharpness metrics to the process of phasing multiple coherent imaging systems into a single high-resolution system. Furthermore, this paper will discuss hardware and present the results of simulations and experiments which will illustrate how aperture synthesis is performed.