This Letter gives the general construction of an enhanced self-heterodyne synthetic aperture imaging ladar (SAIL) system, and proposes the principle of image processing. A point target is reconstructed in the enhanced self-heterodyne SAIL as well as in down-looking SAIL experiments, and the achieved imaging resolution of the enhanced self-heterodyne SAIL is analyzed. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the point target final image in the enhanced self-heterodyne SAIL is higher than that in the do
