A High-Throughput Photon Processing Technique for Range Extension of SPAD-Based LiDAR Receivers

Abstract

There has recently been a keen interest in developing Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems using Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) sensors. This has led to a variety of implementations in pixel combining techniques and Time to Digital Converter (TDC) architectures for such sensors. This paper presents a comparison of these approaches and demonstrates a technique capable of extending the range of LiDAR systems with improved resilience to background conditions. A LiDAR system emulator using a reconfigurable SPAD array and FPGA interface is used to compare these different techniques. A Monte Carlo simulation model leveraging synthetic 3D data is presented to visualize the sensor performance on realistic automotive LiDAR scenes.

Keywords

• Light detection and ranging (LiDAR)
• macro-pixel
• Monte Carlo simulation
• single photon avalanche diode (SPAD)
• synthetic 3D data
• time-of-flight (ToF)