A compact optical homing head adaptive to the approach conditions

Гуревич М.С. Малогабаритная оптическая головка самонаведения, адаптивная к условиям сближения // Оптический журнал. 2009. Т. 76. № 10. С. 58–62.

Gurevich M.S. A compact optical homing head adaptive to the approach conditions [in Russian] // Opticheskii Zhurnal.  2009. V. 76. № 10. P. 58–62.

M. S. Gurevich, "A compact optical homing head adaptive to the approach conditions," Journal of Optical Technology. 76 (10), 637-640 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1364/JOT.76.000637

This paper shows that, when an optical homing head (OHH) approaches a target, so that the radiation power that it receives and the angular size of the target's image greatly increase, it is necessary in the output signal of a rotating photodetector device (PDD) to encode appropriately the angular error of the OHH and a parameter that characterizes the radiation power received by the OHH, in order to ensure stable operation of the OHH with the adaptive automatic-gain-adjustment system traditionally used in such cases. Encoding in this case means that the variation of the radiation transmission in the PDD channel and accordingly of its output-signal parameters are organized as a function of the angular error either by choosing the PDD's topology or by varying the transmission of a mask at its input. It is shown that these codes can be varied during the approach, and that the signal-processing algorithms must vary in accordance with them.