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Single-photon Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems are often equipped
with an array of detectors for improved spatial resolution and sensing speed.
However, given a fixed amount of flux produced by the laser transmitter
across the scene, the per-pixel Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) will decrease
when more pixels are packed in a unit space. This presents a fundamental
trade-off between the spatial resolution of the sensor array and the SNR
received at each pixel. Theoretical characterization of this fundamental
limit is explored. By deriving the photon arrival statistics and introducing
a series of new approximation techniques, the Mean Squared Error (MSE) of the
maximum-likelihood estimator of the time delay is derived. The theoretical
predictions align well with simulations and real data.
Publication:
Stanley H. Chan, Hashan K. Weerasooriya, Weijian Zhang, Pamela Abshire, Istvan Gyongy, Robert K. Henderson,
‘‘Resolution Limit of Single-Photon LiDAR’’,
CVPR 2024.
Code: https://github.itap.purdue.edu/StanleyChanGroup
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