LiDAR Ranging System Based on Automatic Gain Control and Timing Discriminators

A LiDAR ranging system has been developed based on automatic gain control and timing discriminators in this paper. Timing discriminators in the time-pickoff circuit, which employ constant fraction discriminator, were designed to reduce the walk error caused by the variation of pulse amplitude. Automatic gain control was used to concentrate the input pulse amplitude of timing discriminator in a limited range, which can meet the demand of timing discriminators and reduce the timing jitter error of timing discriminators. The time-pickoff circuit using automatic gain control (AGC) and the timing discriminators can improve the precision of LiDAR ranging system. The performance of the designed circuits of AGC and timing discriminators has been tested through simulations and experiments. The results of experiments showed that the timing discriminators were able to effectively improve the precision even if the detected distance changes.