Pointing efficiency in Gaussian beam coherent ladar.

Random pointing errors in coherent ladar tend to cause a reduction in measured signal power due to misalignment among the transmitter, receiver, and (hard) target. A simple model for the size of this impact, in terms of the size of the pointing error, would be useful in the design and evaluation of coherent ladar systems. To be most applicable to monostatic systems, the model should also include correlation between transmitter and receiver pointing errors. We derive an analytic expression for the reduction in average signal power, which we call pointing efficiency, based on Gaussian beam coherent ladar with Gaussian pointing errors that includes arbitrary correlation between transmitter and receiver pointing errors.