Improving the ranging performance of chaos LiDAR

Chaos lidar has gained significant attention due to its high spatial resolution, natural anti-interference capability, and confidentiality. However, constrained by the power of the chaos laser, the sensitivity of the linear detector, and the hardware bandwidth, chaos lidar is greatly restricted in the application of long-distance target detection and imaging. To overcome these constraints, we propose a novel, to the best of our knowledge, chaos lidar based on Geiger mode avalanched photodetectors (GM-APDs) in a previous study called chaos single-photon (CSP) lidar. In this paper, we compare the CSP lidar with the linear mode chaos lidars by combining with lidar equation. Regarding the ranging principle, the CSP lidar is fully digital and breaks through the constraints of a detector's bandwidth and ADC's sampling rate. The simulation results indicate that the detection range of the CSP lidar is approximately 35 times and 8 times greater than that of a continuous-wave chaos lidar and pulsed chaos lidar, respectively. Although the detection accuracy of the CSP lidar is only at the centimeter level and is lower than the linear mode chaos lidars, its consumption of storage resources and power is greatly reduced due to 1-bit quantiza-tion in the GM-APD. Additionally, we investigate the impact of GM-APD parameters on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the CSP lidar system and demonstrate that the dead time difference between GM-APDs has a negligible effect. In conclusion, we present and demonstrate a new chaos lidar system with a large detection range, high SNR, low storage resources and power consumption, and on-chip capability.(c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group

Automated summary

Chaos lidar has limitations in long-distance target detection and imaging due to the power of the chaos laser, sensitivity of the linear detector, and hardware bandwidth. To overcome these constraints, a novel chaos lidar called CSP lidar based on GM-APDs is proposed, which has a larger detection range compared to the traditional chaos lidars. The CSP lidar is a fully digital system and breaks through the constraints of detector bandwidth and ADC sampling rate. It consumes fewer storage resources and power due to 1-bit quantization in the GM-APD.