Modeling false alarm rate and related characteristics of laser ranging and LIDAR avalanche photodiode photoreceivers

Andrew S. Huntington; George M. Williams; Adam O. Lee

doi:10.1117/1.OE.57.7.073106

18 July 2018 Modeling false alarm rate and related characteristics of laser ranging and LIDAR avalanche photodiode photoreceivers

Andrew S. Huntington, George M. Williams, Adam O. Lee

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Optical Engineering, Vol. 57, Issue 7, 073106 (July 2018). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.57.7.073106

Abstract

An analysis is presented of the error introduced into estimates of avalanche photodiode (APD) laser-rangefinder performance by assuming Gaussian distribution of the APD multiplication gain. The amplitude of current pulses emitted by an APD obeys the McIntyre distribution, the tails of which diverge from the Gaussian distribution having the same mean and variance. Because extinction of false alarms requires setting a discrimination threshold far into the tail of an analog photoreceiver’s output distribution, the threshold level required to achieve a specified false alarm rate (FAR) using an APD-based photoreceiver is often not accurately predicted by the standard FAR model of Rice. Characteristics of APD-based photoreceivers are calculated using the McIntyre distribution and are compared with characteristics calculated using the Gaussian approximation.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

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Andrew S. Huntington, George M. Williams, and Adam O. Lee "Modeling false alarm rate and related characteristics of laser ranging and LIDAR avalanche photodiode photoreceivers," Optical Engineering 57(7), 073106 (18 July 2018). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.57.7.073106

Received: 18 March 2018; Accepted: 5 June 2018; Published: 18 July 2018

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