A Low-Cost Measurement Methodology for LiDAR Receiver Integrated Circuits

Abstract

This paper presents a test methodology to facilitate the measuring processes of LiDAR receiver ICs by avoiding the inherent walk error issue. In a typical LiDAR system, a costly laser diode driver emits narrow light pulses with fast rising edges, and the reflected pulses from targets enter an optical detector followed by an analog front-end (AFE) circuit. Then, the received signals pass through the cascaded amplifiers down to the time-to-digital converter (TDC) that can estimate the detection range. However, this relatively long signal journey leads to the significant decline of rising-edge slopes and the output pulse spreading, thus producing inherent walk errors in LiDAR receiver ICs. Compensation methods requiring complex algorithms and extra chip area have frequently been exploited to lessen the walk errors. In this paper, however, a simpler and lower-cost methodology is proposed to test LiDAR receiver ICs by employing a high-speed buffer and variable delay cells right before the TDC. With these circuits, both START and STOP pulses show very similar pulse shapes, thus effectively avoiding the walk error issue. Additionally, the time interval between two pulses is easily determined by varying the number of the delay cells. Test chips of the proposed receiver IC implemented in a 180-nm CMOS process successfully demonstrate easier and more accurate measurement results.

Multitarget-Tracking Method Based on the Fusion of Millimeter-Wave Radar and LiDAR Sensor Information for Autonomous Vehicles

“…Among them, the centralized information fusion system is to send the original measurement information obtained by each sensor to the central processor for time–space registration, data association, tracking, and other processing. This fusion method has a small information loss and high data fusion accuracy, which can reach fusion in the optimal sense [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. However, centralized fusion requires high data quality and large communication bandwidth, which will increase the burden on the fusion center and result in poor real-time data processing.…”