Recent Advances in Thin Film Filters for Lidar Applications

In this talk given at the Society of Vacuum Coaters TechCon 2019, Dr. Fortenberry discusses the optical filter characteristics that are essential to the performance of a variety of Lidar systems and applications.

Improvements in cost, performance, and availability of key components have driven the diversification of Lidar systems in fields such as autonomous vehicles, atmospheric science, terrain mapping, and oceanography. Optical filters, which are critical components of many Lidar systems, are used either at the receiver to isolate the signal from background light or at the transmitter to clean up the spectral characteristics of the laser. The latest developments in thin-film optical filter technology pertaining to temperature dependence, acceptance angle, bandwidth, spectral squareness, transmission, attenuation, and spectral uniformity are outlined in order to illustrate the effects of each of these properties on Lidar system performance.