Abstract:

Accurate velocity estimation is increasingly important for many lidar applications. However, estimating velocity with pulsed lidar conventionally requires fitting an object’s position over time, which requires multiple distance measurements and is complicated by the possibility of lateral motion. In this work, we present the technique of Doppler Single-Photon Lidar, which measures the velocity of a moving target from the Doppler shift in the pulse repetition frequency. Importantly, this velocity estimation can achieve high accuracy despite erroneous distance measurements, such as when a target is beyond the unambiguous range of the lidar system. We demonstrate the effect of the pulse repetition rate on parameter estimation performance through a pair of experiments, highlighting a potential tradeoff between distance and velocity accuracy.