Laser & Infrared, Volume. 54, Issue 3, 373(2024)

A single photon ranging method for high-speed moving targets

LIU Zu-di1, CUI Guo-dong1, PAN Kang-li1, LUO Hui2, and HAN Long1
Author Affiliations
  • 1North China Research Institute of Electro-Optics, Beijing 100015, China
  • 2Beijing Institute of Aerospace Control Devices, Beijing 100854, China
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    As a cutting-edge laser detection technology, single photon laser ranging technology has been successfully applied in the fields of lunar ranging, satellite ranging, and ground measurement. However, single photon ranging still needs to be solved when tracking and ranging high-speed moving targets on airborne air-to-air and ground-to-air platforms, where the echo photons fall in different time windows, resulting in direct counting that cannot effectively extract the signals. Aiming at the application requirements of single photon laser ranging under air-to-air conditions, a single photon ranging method is designed based on time-dependent photon counting technology for high-speed moving targets under full-time, wide-time domain, and multi-noise conditions. The laser echo photon signals are extracted using arrayed single photon detectors and the adjacent time window correlation statistical multi frame processing algorithm, and simulation experiments are carried out on the Matlab platform. The echo photon signals are extracted under the conditions that the maximum range is more than 100 km, the background noise count rate is about 5 MHz, and the average value of the single pulse echo photon count is 1 using the multivariate array single-photon detector. This method can overcome the limitations of traditional single-photon detection, which can only be aligned to static target ranging, and can only be applied in weak background noise and predictable target trajectory conditions such as small receiving field of view and wavelet gate range. The single photon detection can be extended from the range finding of static targets at night on a fixed platform to the range finding of high-speed moving targets all day on a general platform.

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    LIU Zu-di, CUI Guo-dong, PAN Kang-li, LUO Hui, HAN Long. A single photon ranging method for high-speed moving targets[J]. Laser & Infrared, 2024, 54(3): 373

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    Paper Information

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    Received: May. 24, 2023

    Accepted: Jun. 4, 2025

    Published Online: Jun. 4, 2025

    The Author Email:

    DOI:10.3969/j.issn.1001-5078.2024.03.007

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