Yu Chao, Shangguan Mingjia, Xia Haiyun, Zhang Jun, Dou Xiankang, Pan Jian-Wei
Opt Express. 2017 Jun 26;25(13):14611-14620. doi: 10.1364/OE.25.014611.
We present a fully integrated InGaAs/InP negative feedback avalanche diode (NFAD) based free-running single-photon detector (SPD) designed for accurate lidar applications. A free-piston Stirling cooler is used to cool down the NFAD with a large temperature range, and an active hold-off circuit implemented in a field programmable gate array is applied to further suppress the afterpulsing contribution. The key parameters of the free-running SPD including photon detection efficiency (PDE), dark count rate (DCR), afterpulse probability, and maximum count rate (MCR) are dedicatedly optimized for lidar application in practice. We then perform a field experiment using a Mie lidar system with 20 kHz pulse repetition frequency to compare the performance between the free-running InGaAs/InP SPD and a commercial superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD). Our detector exhibits good performance with 1.6 Mcps MCR (0.6 μs hold-off time), 10% PDE, 950 cps DCR, and 18% afterpulse probability over 50 μs period. Such performance is worse than the SNSPD with 60% PDE and 300 cps DCR. However, after performing a specific algorithm that we have developed for afterpulse and count rate corrections, the lidar system performance in terms of range-corrected signal (Pr) distribution using our SPD agrees very well with the result using the SNSPD, with only a relative error of ∼2%. Due to the advantages of low-cost and small size of InGaAs/InP NFADs, such detector provides a practical solution for accurate lidar applications.
我们展示了一种基于全集成铟镓砷/磷化铟负反馈雪崩二极管（NFAD）的自由运行单光子探测器（SPD），该探测器专为精确的激光雷达应用而设计。采用自由活塞斯特林冷却器在较大温度范围内冷却NFAD，并应用现场可编程门阵列中实现的有源抑制电路进一步抑制后脉冲贡献。自由运行SPD的关键参数，包括光子探测效率（PDE）、暗计数率（DCR）、后脉冲概率和最大计数率（MCR），在实际应用中针对激光雷达进行了专门优化。然后，我们使用脉冲重复频率为20 kHz的米氏激光雷达系统进行了现场实验，以比较自由运行的铟镓砷/磷化铟SPD与商用超导纳米线单光子探测器（SNSPD）之间的性能。我们的探测器表现出良好的性能，在50 μs周期内，MCR为1.6 Mcps（抑制时间为0.6 μs），PDE为10%，DCR为950 cps，后脉冲概率为18%。这种性能比PDE为60%、DCR为300 cps的SNSPD要差。然而，在执行我们开发的用于后脉冲和计数率校正的特定算法后，使用我们的SPD的激光雷达系统在距离校正信号（Pr）分布方面的性能与使用SNSPD的结果非常吻合，相对误差仅约为2%。由于铟镓砷/磷化铟NFAD具有低成本和小尺寸的优点，这种探测器为精确的激光雷达应用提供了一种实用的解决方案。
