Holographic LIDAR system

1. A method for performing a light detection and ranging (“LIDAR”) measurement on a scene, comprising:

providing a beam of incident light;

illuminating an addressable spatial light modulator with the beam of incident light;

providing, using the spatial light modulator, a selectable phase delay distribution to the beam of incident light with the addressable spatial modulator to provide an exit beam, the phase delay distribution comprising a representation of a pattern of illumination in the Fourier domain;

performing a frequency-space transformation upon the phase-modulated light of the exit beam to form an image in the spatial domain; and

projecting the image in the spatial domain to form a pattern of illumination in space, the pattern of illumination in space illuminating the scene.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising detecting illumination reflected from the scene.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the detection of illumination reflected from the scene comprises capturing an image of the scene illuminated with the pattern of illumination in space.

4. The method of claim 3 , further comprising comparing the captured image with the projected pattern of illumination.

5. The method of claim 2 , further comprising detecting an abnormality in the scene based on the detected illumination.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein detecting the abnormality comprises identifying differences between a detected pattern illumination and a pattern of illumination corresponding to the phase delay distribution.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the phase delay distribution is selected to illuminate chosen areas of the scene while not illuminating other areas.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the pattern of illumination in space is in the form of a grid.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the incident light is infrared.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the incident light is infrared.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the incident light is coherent.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the incident light has a generally planar wavefront.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the phase-modulated light of the exit beam is a phase-only modulated light.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the frequency-space transformation is performed using Fourier optics.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the incident light is coherent and infrared, and further comprising detecting illumination reflected from the scene.

16. A light detection and ranging (“LIDAR”) system, the system comprising

a lighting device arranged to produce a controllable light beam for illuminating a scene, the device comprising:

a source of incident light;

an addressable spatial light modulator arranged to provide a selectable phase delay distribution to a beam of incident light from the source, the phase delay distribution comprising a representation of a pattern of illumination in the Fourier domain;

Fourier optics arranged to receive phase-modulated light from the spatial light modulator and perform a frequency-space transformation upon the received phase-modulated light to form a light distribution;

projection optics arranged to project the light distribution to form the pattern of illumination as said controllable light; and

a light detector arranged to detect light reflected from the controllable light beam by the scene.

17. The LIDAR system of claim 16 , wherein the source of incident light is a source of incident light having a generally planar wavefront.

18. The LIDAR system of claim 16 , wherein the spatial light modulator is a phase-only spatial light modulator.

19. A vehicle comprising the LIDAR system of claim 16 .