A wide dynamic range laser radar receiver based on input pulse-shaping techniques

Abstract This paper presents a Time-of-Flight laser radar receiver based on pulse-shaping at the input to the receiver channel, in which the first zero-crossing point of the converted pulse is marked as the timing moment. In this technique, an LC resonator is combined with a nonlinear feedback TIA to achieve high accuracy and high precision within a wide dynamic range. The key advantage is that the receiver does not require any post compensation or gain control techniques so that the total complexity of the TOF radar is reduced considerably. Measurements made in a 0.35μ m standard CMOS process show a bandwidth of 230MHz and an input-referred noise of 70nA RMS. The receiver chip consumes 155mW power from a 3.3V supply. The single-shot precision and accuracy of the receiver within a dynamic range of 1:50,000 are ~ 15mm(SNR=12) and ~ ± 15mm respectively. A wider dynamic range can be achieved with a larger accuracy tolerance. The functionality of the proposed receiver channel is also verified over an input pulse variation and temperature range of 0°C to 50°C