Improving the ranging performance of chaos LiDAR

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Laser Technology
• Signal Processing

Background:

• Chaos lidar offers high resolution, anti-interference, and confidentiality.
• Current chaos lidar systems face limitations in long-distance detection due to laser power, detector sensitivity, and hardware bandwidth.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and evaluate a novel chaos lidar system utilizing Geiger mode avalanche photodetectors (GM-APDs).
• To compare the performance of the proposed chaos single-photon (CSP) lidar with traditional linear mode chaos lidars.

Main Methods:

• Development of a chaos lidar system based on GM-APDs (CSP lidar).
• Comparative analysis using the lidar equation to assess ranging principles and performance metrics.
• Simulation of detection range and investigation of GM-APD parameter impacts on signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

Main Results:

• CSP lidar demonstrates a significantly extended detection range, approximately 35x for continuous-wave and 8x for pulsed chaos lidar.
• The system achieves a high SNR with reduced storage and power consumption due to 1-bit quantization.
• Dead time differences in GM-APDs were found to have a negligible effect on system SNR.

Conclusions:

• The novel CSP lidar system overcomes previous range limitations of chaos lidar technology.
• This system offers a promising solution for long-distance target detection and imaging with enhanced efficiency and reduced resource requirements.
• The CSP lidar is suitable for on-chip integration and applications demanding high SNR and low power consumption.