Complex moving target recognition based on optical phase-locked loop in LIDAR

•Compared with other methods, this method can detect complex moving targets adaptively by using optical phase-locked loop at the receiver of coherent LIDAR. Because optical phase-locked loop located at the receiver can compensate translation adaptively, this method is suitable for the moving target with uniform speed or variable speed.•This method significantly reduces the influence of target translation on vibration information extraction through the carrier tracking mode of optical phase-locked loop. And phase frequency detector is used as the phase detector in the optical phase-locked loop, which ensures that the loop gain is not affected by the target reflectivity and maintains the stability of the loop bandwidth.