For remote sensing, high-resolution imaging techniques are helpful to catch more characteristic information of the target. We extend pseudo-thermal light ghost imaging to the area of remote imaging and propose a ghost imaging lidar system. For the first time, we demonstrate experimentally that the real-space image of a target at about 1.0 km range with 20 mm resolution is achieved by ghost imaging via sparsity constraints (GISC) technique. The characters of GISC technique compared to the existing lidar systems are also discussed.

Three-dimensional (3D) remote imaging attracts increasing attentions in capturing a target’s characteristics. Although great progress for 3D remote imaging has been made with methods such as scanning imaging lidar and pulsed floodlight-illumination imaging lidar, either the detection range or application mode are limited by present methods. Ghost imaging via sparsity constraint (GISC), enables the reconstruction of a two-dimensional N-pixel image from much fewer than N measurements. By GISC technique and the depth information of targets captured with time-resolved measurements, we report a 3D GISC lidar system and experimentally show that a 3D scene at about 1.0 km range can be stably reconstructed with global measurements even below the Nyquist limit. Compared with existing 3D optical imaging methods, 3D GISC has the capability of both high efficiency in information extraction and high sensitivity in detection. This approach can be generalized in nonvisible wavebands and applied to other 3D imaging areas.

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