Amplitude-Modulated Continuous Wave Scanning LIDAR Based on Parallel Phase-Demodulation

Abstract

Light detection and ranging (LIDAR) is one of solutions to extract 3D depth image of objects. Especially, as fabrication process of silicon image sensor has been progressed, amplitude-modulated continuous wave (AMCW) time-of-flight (ToF) cameras have been widely used due to their relatively cheap price and high measurement accuracy. However, to estimate ToF, reflected laser signal should be sequentially demodulated using optoelectronic device such as demodulation pixel, which induces relatively long integration and processing times. Additionally, due to the limitation of demodulation contrast and optical fill factor of demodulation pixel, depth measurement accuracy is also limited. To cope with such shortcomings of conventional ToF cameras, a novel AMCW method based on parallel phase-demodulation and related scanning LIDAR prototype are demonstrated in this paper. This scanning AMCW LIDAR prototype has enabled scanning object in extremely short integration time with adaptable field of view (FoV) and resolution to extract precise 3D depth images.