Accuracy of echo detection using differentiation for compact LIDAR implementation

Lidars are gaining popularity in the automotive domain, especially in the field of autonomous driving systems. Development of multi-channel, monolithic Lidars can reduce the system cost and size for better integration into automobile and/or robotic components. Since Lidars work on the principle of time of flight, an important function of the Lidar system is to precisely detect the time of arrival of the return pulse. A method is being discussed in this paper to detect the peak location in the Lidar return signal using differentiation. With a single chip solution, the proposed method can potentially reduce the footprint of the analog signal chain by 30%, but with a performance trade-off for signals with low SNR. The distance measurement accuracy of this method is being compared to the standard methods which use high-resolution, high-speed ADCs.