Wu Miao, Zhao Xiaochen, Chen Ruen, Zhang Labao, He Weiji, Chen Qian
Opt Express. 2024 Jan 15;32(2):2574-2589. doi: 10.1364/OE.509252.
Single-photon light detection and ranging (LiDAR) is widely used to reconstruct 3D scenes. Nevertheless, depth and reflectivity maps obtained by single-photon detection usually suffer from noise problems. Threshold LiDAR techniques using photon-number-resolving detectors were proposed to suppress noise by filtering low photon numbers, but these techniques renounce multiple levels of information and could not be compatible when it comes to high-noise low-signal regime. In this manuscript, we propose a detection scheme which combines the noise suppression of threshold detection with the signal amplification of photon-number-resolving detectors to further enhance LiDAR performance. The enhancement attained is compared to single-photon and threshold detection schemes under a wide range of signal and noise conditions, in terms of signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR), detection rate and false alarm rate, which are key metrics for LiDAR. Extensive simulations and real-world experiments show that the proposed scheme can reconstruct better depth and reflectivity maps. These results enable the development of high-efficient and low-noise LiDAR systems.
单光子光探测与测距（LiDAR）被广泛用于重建三维场景。然而，通过单光子探测获得的深度图和反射率图通常存在噪声问题。提出了使用光子数分辨探测器的阈值LiDAR技术，通过过滤低光子数来抑制噪声，但这些技术放弃了多个层次的信息，并且在高噪声低信号状态下无法兼容。在本论文中，我们提出了一种检测方案，该方案将阈值检测的噪声抑制与光子数分辨探测器的信号放大相结合，以进一步提高LiDAR性能。在广泛的信号和噪声条件下，根据信噪比（SNR）、检测率和误报率（这些是LiDAR的关键指标），将所实现的增强效果与单光子和阈值检测方案进行了比较。大量的模拟和实际实验表明，所提出的方案能够重建更好的深度图和反射率图。这些结果推动了高效低噪声LiDAR系统的发展。
