Histogram-less SPAD LiDAR

Tontini et al. from  FBK and University of Trento recently published an article titled "Histogram-less LiDAR through SPAD response linearization" in the IEEE Sensors journal.

Open access link: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10375298

Abstract:  We present a new method to acquire the 3D information from a SPAD-based direct-Time-of-Flight (d-ToF) imaging system which does not require the construction of a histogram of timestamps and can withstand high flux operation regime. The proposed acquisition scheme emulates the behavior of a SPAD detector with no distortion due to dead time, and extracts the TOF information by a simple average operation on the photon timestamps ensuring ease of integration in a dedicated sensor and scalability to large arrays. The method is validated through a comprehensive mathematical analysis, whose predictions are in agreement with a numerical Monte Carlo model of the problem. Finally, we show the validity of the predictions in a real d-ToF measurement setup under challenging background conditions well beyond the typical pile-up limit of 5% detection rate up to a distance of 3.8m.