A LiDAR Architecture Based on Indirect ToF For Autonomous Cars

Abstract A LiDAR architecture for autonomous cars is presented and validated by numerical and experimental results. The proposed scheme is based on indirect time-of-flight principle based on continuous-wave pseudorandom codes and incoherent detection for range evaluation. The range ambiguity and resolution are controlled by the parameters of the pseudorandom code. Experimental results are reported for target detection ranging from 13 to 1,000 m, as well as a demonstration of a dual-target detection, demonstrating the efficiency of the proposed LiDAR architecture to operate in real scenarios of autonomous cars. A measured range error of less than 0.6 % has been achieved for both single and dual-target detection.