Heterodyne efficiency reflects the matching states of phase and amplitude between a local oscillator (LO) beam and a received signal beam and is, therefore, an indicator of system performance. Many factors can cause sensitivity degradation or decoherence in active heterodyne detection applications, such as target speckle, atmospheric turbulence, and optical system aberrations. This paper presents a method for calculating the heterodyne efficiency by mixing LO and customized signal beams in the plane of the detector surface. Results show that the heterodyne efficiency is fixed if the amplitude distribution of the signal light obeys a certain distribution, but the phase mismatches can significantly degrade the system sensitivity. Furthermore, a high-speed camera heterodyne system was developed to evaluate the effectiveness of genetic algorithms for correcting the spatial phase mismatch in applications involving active heterodyne detection. The array detector method improves the heterodyne system sensitivity and benefits active detection applications such as Synthetic Aperture Ladar, Laser Vibrometry, and Long-range Coherent Ladar.

外差效率反映了本地振荡器 (LO) 波束和接收信号波束之间相位和幅度的匹配状态，因此是系统性能的指标。许多因素会导致有源外差检测应用中的灵敏度下降或退相干，例如目标散斑、大气湍流和光学系统像差。本文提出了一种通过在探测器表面的平面内混合 LO 和定制信号光束来计算外差效率的方法。结果表明，如果信号光的幅度分布服从一定分布，则外差效率是固定的，但相位失配会显着降低系统灵敏度。此外，开发了一个高速相机外差系统，以评估遗传算法在涉及主动外差检测的应用中校正空间相位失配的有效性。阵列探测器方法提高了外差系统的灵敏度并有益于主动探测应用，如合成孔径雷达、激光测振和远程相干雷达。