A. Makynen et al., DISPLACEMENT SENSING RESOLUTION OF POSITION-SENSITIVE DETECTORS IN ATMOSPHERIC-TURBULENCE USING RETROREFLECTED BEAM, IEEE transactions on instrumentation and measurement, 46(5), 1997, pp. 1133-1136
The position sensing resolution of a lateral-effect photodiode (LEP) a
nd a four-quadrant (4Q) photodetector used as the position sensitive d
etector (PSD) in a sensor which measures the lateral displacement of a
corner cube reflector (CCR) by illuminating it and detecting the posi
tion of the reflected light spot with the PSD is studied, An LEP is mu
ch noisier than a 4Q detector, but in an outdoor environment the sensi
tivity of the 4Q detector to atmospheric turbulence due to defocusing
makes its resolution worse than that of an LEP, Submillimeter resoluti
ons at the target distances of several hundreds of meters are electric
ally achievable with an LEP, Outdoors, however, its resolution is also
bounded by the atmospheric turbulence, In turbulent measurement condi
tions, standard deviations of better than 1 cm were typically achievab
le up to the distance of 300 m and about 10 cm up to half a kilometer.