A High-Resolution Calibration method for Time-to-Digital Converter of Lidar

LIU Ruqing; LI Feng; ZHU Jingguo; JIANG Yan; JIANG Chenghao; HU Tao

doi:10.23919/cje.2023.00.237

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Ruqing LIU, Feng LI, Jingguo ZHU, et al., “A High-Resolution Calibration method for Time-to-Digital Converter of Lidar,” Chinese Journal of Electronics, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 1–7, 2025 doi: 10.23919/cje.2023.00.237

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Ruqing LIU, Feng LI, Jingguo ZHU, et al., “A High-Resolution Calibration method for Time-to-Digital Converter of Lidar,” Chinese Journal of Electronics, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 1–7, 2025 doi: 10.23919/cje.2023.00.237

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A High-Resolution Calibration method for Time-to-Digital Converter of Lidar

doi: 10.23919/cje.2023.00.237

1.
Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China

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Author Bio:
Ruqing LIU received her M.S. degree from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China. She is a Senior Engineer with the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Her research interests are Lidar FPGA signal processing and the design of analog integrated circuit chips. (Email: liuruqing@ime.ac.cn)

Feng LI received his Ph.D. degree from Beihang University, Beijing, China. He is an Associate Researcher with the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. His research interests are signal detection, embedded system, and electromechanical control. (Email: lifeng1@ime.ac.cn)

Jingguo ZHU received his Ph.D. degree from from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the Leader of the Lidar Team. His research interests are Lidar, intelligent sensing, and photoelectric countermeasure. (Email: zhujingguo@ime.ac.cn)

Yan JIANG received his M.S. degree from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China. He is an Engineer of the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. His research interest focuses on Lidar signal processing. (Email: jiangyan@ime.ac.cn)

Chenghao JIANG received his Ph.D. degree from Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun, China. He is a Researcher with the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. His research interests are laser detection technology and visual detection. (Email: jiangchenghao@ime.ac.cn)

Tao HU received his M.S. degree from Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun, China. He engaged in the research of optoelectronic integration, focusing on the high-speed optical communication and lidar application field. (Email: hutao@ime.ac.cn)
Corresponding author: Email: lifeng1@ime.ac.cn
Available Online: 2024-04-29

Abstract

Abstract

High-resolution time-to-digital converter (TDC) finds major applications in light detection and ranging (Lidar) systems as one of the high precision time measuring techniques. In this work, a high-resolution TDC is designed and implemented on a Xilinx FPGA board. For precision time measurements, the proposed TDC uses an internal tapped delay chain written in Verilog. The TDC circuit measurement errors are examined and calibrated following several principles of error reduction techniques to meet the specific demand for the high-precision Lidar range. Experiments have shown that the suggested calibration TDC has higher performance, achieving sub 35 ps resolution. The design is fully customizable and implemented as a set of separate IP cores. This allows for easy implementation and meets the requirements of the present-day pulse Lidar systems.
- Time-to-digital converter,
- Lidar,
- Tapped delay chain,
- Measurement error calibration

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References(18)

References

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