A Low-Noise and Wide Dynamic Range 15 MHz CMOS Receiver for Pulsed Time-of-Flight Laser Ranging

Abstract

A laser radar receiver channel targeted at pulsed time-of-flight laser radar applications using 5ns…20ns laser pulses at the 1550nm wavelength region has been designed. The receiver includes a transimpedance preamplifier, post-amplifiers and analog output buffer and has a bandwidth of 15MHz and input reduced total equivalent current noise of ~3nArms without the contribution of the APD noise. The receiver supports both the single shot and transient recording operation modes. By utilizing the time domain compensation methods, the single shot timing walk is at the level of +/-100ps within a wide dynamic range of 1: 36 000 of the received echo amplitudes. It is demonstrated that the designed receiver allows the pulsed time-of-flight measurement in the single shot mode to noncooperative targets up to distances of several hundreds of meters with a laser pulse power of 4 W and receiver aperture of 20mm.

Improving the Accuracy of TOF LiDAR Based on Balanced Detection Method

“…The jitter error of pulsed TOF laser ranging is roughly proportional to the rise time and the SNR of the echo pulse signal [17,28].…”

High-gain bandwidth product of wafer-bonded near-infrared III-V/silicon APD using polycrystalline silicon bonding layer

“…Avalanche photodiode (APD) is a highly sensitive photodetector that can detect and amplify weak light signals using the avalanche multiplication effect. They have been widely used in optical communications [1,2], laser ranging [3][4][5], and single photon counting [6]. InGaAs materials with a direct band gap have several advantages, such as high electron mobility, a wide range of response wavelengths, and high absorption coefficients in the near-infrared wavelength range [7,8].…”