Improved performance ladar receiver

Optical LADARs require high sensitivity near 1 nanowatt while also having fast recovery to overloads as high as 100W. Fast recovery is required in order to detect a secondary target from behind a bright target. In the current work, we have created a new family of LADAR receivers having a higher gain bandwidth product than most commercially available receivers. While maintaining the receiver bandwidth, a 4.8 x increase in responsivity can now be achieved. With cooling of the APD, these new receivers are offering more than a twofold time reduction of the NEP, allowing longer range coverage of the LADAR system. In addition, a new feature is the improvement of the overload recovery to 93ns from an laser pulse of 56mW, allowing close secondary target detection.