High-Throughput SPAD Signal Processing

Edinburgh University and ST publish an open access IEEE JSSC paper "A High-Throughput Photon Processing Technique for Range Extension of SPAD-based LiDAR Receivers" by Sarrah M. Patanwala, Istvan Gyongy, Hanning Mai, Andreas Aßmann, Neale A. W. Dutton, Bruce R. Rae, and Robert K. Henderson.

"There has recently been a keen interest in developing LiDAR systems using SPAD sensors. This has led to a variety of implementations in pixel combining techniques and TDC architectures for such sensors. This paper presents a comparison of these approaches and demonstrates a technique capable of extending the range of LiDAR systems with improved resilience to background conditions. A LiDAR system emulator using a reconfigurable SPAD array and FPGA interface is used to compare these different techniques. A Monte Carlo simulation model leveraging synthetic 3D data is presented to visualize the sensor performance on realistic automotive LiDAR scenes."