Methodology To Investigate Interference Using Off-The-Shelf LiDARs

With the increase of assisted and automated functions provided on new vehicles and some automotive manufacturers starting to equip high end vehicles with LiDARs, there is a need to consider and analyse the effects of having LiDAR sensors on different vehicles interacting with each other in close proximity (e.g. cities, highways, crossroads, etc.). This paper investigates interference between 360 degree scanning LiDARs, which are one of the common typologies of automotive LiDARs. One LiDAR was selected as the victim, and 5 different LiDARs were used one by one as offenders. The victim and offending LiDARs were placed in a controlled environment to reduce sources of noise, and several sets of measurements were carried out and repeated at least four times. When the attacker and victim LiDARs were turned on at the same time some variations in the signals were observed, however the statistical variation was too low to be able to identify interference. As a result, this work highlights that there is no obvious effect of interference witnessed between the selected off-the-shelf 360 degree LiDAR sensors; this lack of interference can be attributed to the working principle of this type of LiDAR and low probability of having directly interfering beams, and also to the focusing and filtering optical circuits that the LiDARs have by design. The presented results confirm that mechanical scanning LiDAR can be used safely for assisted and automated driving even in situations with multiple LiDARs.