A Cross-Correlation-Based Time-of-Flight Design for Pulsed Chaos Lidar Systems

This work presents an integrated circuit design of a time-of-flight module for pulsed chaos lidar systems. With a mixed-signal architecture and 1-bit digitization, the proposed design evaluates the delay in time and the corresponding distance by calculating the cross-correlation function between the two signals using a 16-unit multiplier-and-integrator array. Tunable filtering further allows resolution and dynamic range scaling. The prototype IC with 90-nm CMOS was evaluated using an in-house pulsed chaos lidar system. At 5 GS/s, experimental results demonstrate a maximum ranging error of 3.38 cm with 1-
$\sigma $
of 1.97 cm over a distance of 7.4 m. With the signal pulse width of 100 ns and a repetition period of 50
$\mu \text{s}$
, this work consumes 113 mW under a 1-V supply.