Real time three dimensional television system

Claim 2

In a real time three-dimensional television system having a transmitter, one or more remote receivers, and a transmission facility for sending signals generated at the transmitter to said remote receivers, a source of coherent light located at the transmitter, means for nonlinear modulating at a microwave frequency said coherent light, means for filtering out all but one sideband of the said coherent light, means for illuminating an object scene with said one sideband of coherent light, photodetection means positioned to receive a portion of the light reflected fRom said object scene, means for also deriving a narrow reference beam of coherent light from said source, and means for raster scanning the reference beam over said photodetection means to generate an alternating current signal having a carrier in the microwave region which is modulated in phase and amplitude in accordance with the interference pattern produced by the interfering light beams impinging on the photodetection means.

Claim 3

A real time three-dimensional television system comprising a source of coherent light, means for nonlinear modulating the coherent light at a frequency in the microwave range, means for filtering out all but one sideband of the modulated light, means for illuminating one object scene with said one sideband for modulated light, means for also deriving a narrow reference beam of coherent light from said source, photodetection means positioned to receive a portion of the light reflected from said object scene, means for scanning in a raster type manner the reference beam over said photodetection means to generate a signal which is modulated in phase and amplitude in accordance with the interference pattern produced by the interfering light beams impinging on the photodetection means, means for transmitting the aforementioned modulated signal to a remote receiver, means for recovering the phase and amplitude modulation information and for storing the same a frame at a time in respective storage devices, means for reading out samples of the stored information at the end of each complete frame, means for applying the phase and amplitude samples to respective optical modulators arranged in an array, and means at the end of each complete frame for pulsing a second coherent light source located at the receiver with the light therefrom directed toward said array whereby an instantaneous image of the original object scene is obtained at the receiver. e. A system in accordance with claim 3 wherein the microwave modulating frequency is also transmitted to the remote receiver and utilized to recover the phase modulated information from the transmitted phase and amplitude modulated signal.

Claim 4

A system in accordance with claim 2 wherein a signal is sent to the receiver coherent light source at the end of each transmitter raster scan for pulsing the same at the end of each complete frame.

Claim 5

A system in accordance with claim 2 wherein each of said respective storage devices comprises a delay line having multiple taps thereon and the array of optical modulators comprises a plurality of electro-optical crystalline devices equal in number to the number of taps on said storage devices, and means for electrically connecting each tap of each delay line to a respective selected electro-optical crystalline device.