Systems and Methods for High Precision Direct Time-of-Flight Lidar in the Presence of Strong Pile-Up

• Main Author: Finkelstein, Hod
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 27.07.2023
• Subjects: ANALOGOUS ARRANGEMENTS USING OTHER WAVES; DETERMINING DISTANCE OR VELOCITY BY USE OF RADIO WAVES; LOCATING OR PRESENCE-DETECTING BY USE OF THE REFLECTION ORRERADIATION OF RADIO WAVES; MEASURING; PHYSICS; RADIO DIRECTION-FINDING; RADIO NAVIGATION; TESTING

Systems and methods are disclosed that employ a photodetector having a field of view. The photodetector generates signals indicative of photon detections in response to incident light over time. A circuit generates first histogram data and second histogram data in a memory based on the generated signals during first and second collection subframes of a frame respectively using first and second mappings of time to bins respectively, wherein the second mapping of time to bins for the second collection subframe exhibits shorter bin widths than the first mapping of time to bins for the first collection subframe. A range to a target in in the field of view is resolvable in the event of a pile-up condition for the photodetector based on (1) data indicative of a coarse range estimate derived from the first histogram data and (2) data indicative of a range adjustment derived from the second histogram data.