A low-noise receiver channel for a pulsed laser rangefinder

Author

Ruotsalainen, Tarmo ; Palojärvi, Pasi ; Peltola, Tero ; Kostamovaara, Juha

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Oulu Univ., Finland

Volume

2

fYear

1997

fDate

3-6 Aug. 1997

Firstpage

1395

Abstract

An integrated BiCMOS receiver channel for a pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinder has been designed. The circuit has two identical channels, one for the start pulse and the other for the stop pulse, each consisting of a low-noise transimpedance amplifier channel and a timing discriminator. The measured bandwidth of the amplifier channels is 5 MHz, Z_max=8.4 MΩ and the input referred noise 0.6 pA/√Hz. The timing error of the receiver is within +/-4.5 cm, when the amplitude of the input signal varies from 21 nA to 2.2 μA (∼1:100). The measurement results show that a decimeter-level distance measurement accuracy has been achieved.

Keywords

BiCMOS analogue integrated circuits; discriminators; instrumentation amplifiers; integrated circuit noise; laser ranging; optical radar; optical receivers; preamplifiers; timing; 21 nA to 2.2 muA; 5 MHz; decimeter-level distance measurement accuracy; integrated BiCMOS receiver channel; low-noise receiver channel; low-noise transimpedance amplifier; pulsed laser rangefinder; time-of-flight rangefinder; timing discriminator; timing error; Bandwidth; BiCMOS integrated circuits; Integrated circuit measurements; Low-noise amplifiers; Noise measurement; Optical design; Optical pulses; Pulse amplifiers; Pulse circuits; Timing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Circuits and Systems, 1997. Proceedings of the 40th Midwest Symposium on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-3694-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSCAS.1997.662343

Filename

662343