A 250-MHz BiCMOS receiver channel with leading edge timing discriminator for a pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinder

Palojarvi, P.; Ruotsalainen, T.; Kostamovaara, J.

doi:10.1109/jssc.2005.848022

Cited by 61 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…In lidar applications, the dead time-affected acquisition results in closer apparent distances, which has a similar effect to the intensity-dependent change in perceived depth known as "range walk error" [42]- [44]. Range walk is the result of using a discriminator to trigger in the leading edge of a signal pulse; a stronger signal with a steeper rising edge will be detected earlier than a weaker signal with a smaller slope.…”

Section: Other Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dead Time Compensation for High-Flux Ranging

Rapp

Dawson

et al. 2019

IEEE Trans. Signal Process.

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Dead time effects have been considered a major limitation for fast data acquisition in various time-correlated single photon counting applications, since a commonly adopted approach for dead time mitigation is to operate in the low-flux regime where dead time effects can be ignored. Through the application of lidar ranging, this work explores the empirical distribution of detection times in the presence of dead time and demonstrates that an accurate statistical model can result in reduced ranging error with shorter data acquisition time when operating in the high-flux regime. Specifically, we show that the empirical distribution of detection times converges to the stationary distribution of a Markov chain. Depth estimation can then be performed by passing the empirical distribution through a filter matched to the stationary distribution. Moreover, based on the Markov chain model, we formulate the recovery of arrival distribution from detection distribution as a nonlinear inverse problem and solve it via provably convergent mathematical optimization. By comparing per-detection Fisher information for depth estimation from high-and low-flux detection time distributions, we provide an analytical basis for possible improvement of ranging performance resulting from the presence of dead time. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our formulation and algorithm via simulations of lidar ranging.Index Terms-Dead time, high-flux ranging, lidar, Markov chain, nonlinear inverse, single-photon detection.J. Rapp and Y. Ma contributed equally to this work.

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Section: Other Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dead Time Compensation for High-Flux Ranging

Rapp

Dawson

et al. 2019

IEEE Trans. Signal Process.

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“…2, and the other part originates from the varying group delay of the receiver channel for different pulse leading edge speeds. 7,8 The geometrical error arises from the finite slow rate of the optical laser pulse and can thus be lowered by increasing the edge speed of the pulse. As a zero-order approximation, the electric delay of the receiver channel is proportional to the bandwidth of the channel: the higher the bandwidth, the smaller the delay and thus also the timing walk.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of the leading-edge timing walk in pulsed TOF laser range finding with avalanche bipolar junction transistor (BJT) and metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) switch based laser diode drivers

Hintikka

Hallman

Kostamovaara

2017

Review of Scientific Instruments

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Timing walk error in pulsed time-of-flight based laser range finding was studied using two different types of laser diode drivers. The study compares avalanche bipolar junction transistor (BJT) and metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor switch based laser pulse drivers, both producing 1.35 ns current pulse length (full width at half maximum), and investigates how the slowly rising part of the current pulse of the avalanche BJT based driver affects the leading edge timing walk. The walk error was measured to be very similar with both drivers within an input signal dynamic range of 1:10 000 (receiver bandwidth of 700 MHz) but increased rapidly with the avalanche BJT based driver at higher values of dynamic range. The slowly rising part does not exist in the current pulse produced by the metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) based laser driver, and thus the MOS based driver can be utilized in a wider dynamic range.

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“…In applications such as nuclear photomultiplier detectors [1], time-of-flight sensing [2], optical fiber time-domain reflectometry [3], pulsed laser range finding systems [4][5] [6], and so on, high speed of measurement points per second and an accurate timing detector to discriminate the timing points in the readout circuits are required. In the case of a 3D Focal Plane Array (FPA) flash LIDAR/LADAR [7], it has possible time to deal with post-processing in the readout circuits or program space such as filtering, accumulation, correlation, and averaging owing to high speed measurement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advanced compact 3D lidar using a high speed fiber coupled pulsed laser diode and a high accuracy timing discrimination readout circuit

Lee

Baeg

2012

SPIE Proceedings

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At last year, we have been developing 3D scanning LIDAR designated as KIDAR-B25, which features the 3D scanning structure based on an optically and mechanically coupled instrument. In contrast with previous scanning LIDARs, vertical scanning is realized using two stepping motors synchronized with movement and moves in a spiral. From the results of outdoor experiments conducted last year to evaluate and measure the LIDAR performance and stability, we identified some limitations and problems that should be resolved. In the first instance, the samples per second are inefficient for use in detection, object clustering, and classification. In addition, the accuracy and precision of distance at every point is seriously affected by the reflectance and distance of the target. Therefore, we have focused on improving the 3D LIDAR range finding performance, speed of measurement, and stability regardless of environmental variation. Toward the realization of these goals, in this paper, we deal with two improvements compared with previous 3D LIDAR.First, we have stabilized the laser driver, which can drive the peak current up to 190A with a short 4ns pulse width and 55 KHz fire frequency. In addition, the TO-CAN type and low peak power laser diode is replaced with multi-channel fiber coupled diodes with high power (peak power: 60W), satisfactory duty factor (0.01 ~0.1%), high coupling efficiency (80%), and optimal beam shape (1~2mrad). However, due to the TO-220 package type of laser diode, the parasitic inductance and capacitance of the laser diode are increased, and hence the measured pulse width (11ns) from the Si-pin PD with 1.5GHz bandwidth is relatively long compared with the value measured by monitoring the register (4ns) in the laser driver. However, the measured rising edge of the pulse with the Pin-PD is about 2.5ns. Four channels of the fiber coupled pulsed laser diode module are designed and implemented in our advanced 3D LIDAR, and the total maximum pulse repetition frequency can be operated up to 220KHz.Second, single channel constant fraction discriminators (CFDs) based on a lumped element for accurately detecting the timing point in the part of readout circuit are developed and evaluated through experiments with the previous 3D LIDAR KIDAR-B25. We have changed the leading edge discriminator to a CFD, which can detect the exact timing crossing points of inverting and non-inverting (delayed and fracted) signals using a fast comparator. The timing discriminator is composed of a threshold level comparator and a constant fraction discriminator (CFD). This circuit can considerably reduce the random walk errors resulting from variation of the timing detection point due to the amplitude. For the scanning mechanism and optics, the previously designed optical assemblies and scanning mechanical instrument are utilized and can measure a wide range of vertical plane up to ±15 o with 0.25 o angular resolution and the spiral rotation of horizontal plane up to 360 o with 0.06 o angular resolution (max distant: 50m). Third, reg...

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A 250-MHz BiCMOS receiver channel with leading edge timing discriminator for a pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinder

Cited by 61 publications

References 12 publications

Dead Time Compensation for High-Flux Ranging

Dead Time Compensation for High-Flux Ranging

Comparison of the leading-edge timing walk in pulsed TOF laser range finding with avalanche bipolar junction transistor (BJT) and metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) switch based laser diode drivers

Advanced compact 3D lidar using a high speed fiber coupled pulsed laser diode and a high accuracy timing discrimination readout circuit

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