Development of a ROIC for lidar on planetary lander by CMOS technology

Light detection and ranging (LIDAR) has been used in remote sensing systems, obstacle avoidance systems on planetary landers, rendezvous docking systems, and formation flight control systems. A wide dynamic range is necessary for LIDAR systems on planetary landers and in rendezvous docking systems. For example, a dynamic range of 60 dB was required for the receiving system used in the Hayabusa mission to measure distances between 50 m and 50 km. In addition, the obstacle detection and avoidance system of a planetary lander requires a ranging resolution of better than 10 cm. For planetary landers, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is developing a readout integrated circuit (ROIC) for LIDAR reception. This report introduces the design of the customized IC and reports the results of preliminary experiments evaluating the prototype, LIDARX04.