Coherent synthetic aperture imaging for visible remote sensing via reflective Fourier ptychography

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can measure the phase with antenna and microwave, which cannot be directly extended to visible light imaging due to phase lost. In this letter, we reported an active remote sensing with visible light via reflective Fourier ptychography (FP), termed coherent synthetic aperture imaging (CSAI), achieving high resolution, wide field-of-view (FOV) and phase recovery. A proof-of-concept experiment was reported with laser scanning and a collimator for the infinite object. Both smooth and rough objects are tested, and the spatial resolution increased from 15.6 um to 3.48 um with a factor of 4.5. The speckle noise can be suppressed by FP unexpectedly. Meanwhile, the CSAI method may replace the adaptive optics to tackle the aberration induced from atmospheric turbulence and optical system by one-step deconvolution.