Long-range single photon three-dimensional imaging with superconducting nanowire single-photon detector

Single-photon LiDAR offers single-photon sensitivity and picoseconds timing resolution, leading to high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) images. In this paper, we investigate the reconstruction of 3D images from data acquired using a custom designed time-of-flight scanning transceiver based on the time-correlated single-photon counting LiDAR. The system comprises a pulsed laser source at 1064nm wavelength, a monostatic scanning transceiver and a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector. The maximum distance of ranging finding under the experimental environments is up to 95.1km, and high-resolution 3D image of a pavilion is reconstructed at the range of 2.9km. A total variation restoration optimization algorithm is performed to reduce the acquisition time of the entire 3D images. Experimental results show that this system is feasible for imaging at longer range by refining the setup, and have potential for target recognition.