Apparatus for high accuracy distance and velocity measurement and methods thereof

Abstract

A system and method for measuring a parameter of a target in accordance with embodiments of the present invention includes transmitting at least one signal towards a target and receiving at least a portion of the transmitted signal back from the target. The measured parameter is one of distance velocity, or reflectivity. The transmitted signal is of the coherent burst waveform, and upon reception is processed with equivalent time sampling, AGC with minimal, if any, error, and a discrete Fourier transform.

Description

[0001]This is a continuation application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 722,889, filed Nov. 26, 2003, which claims the benefit U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60 / 429,520, filed Nov. 26, 2002, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for measuring the distance to a remote target and also for measuring the velocity of the target relative to the apparatus.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]A profound need exists in many trades, disciplines, and industries for a truly accurate non-contact distance-measuring system. For example, the construction trades would benefit from a handheld device that emitted a visible laser beam that when aimed at a target, would measure the distance from the device to the target in less than one second, with accuracy better than one-sixteenth of an inch, independent of ambient temperature and other environmental constraints, and do so with r...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0052]The present invention is an improved method and apparatus that utilizes the coherent burst waveform to measure distance and velocity accurately and economically. It does this by replacing much of the analog signal processing found in the prior art with digital methods and incorporates pre-existing equivalent time sampling technology to facilitate an economical analog to digital conversion process. Furthermore, the electronic AGC function has been moved from that part of the analog signal processing train that contributes to uncalibrated phase changes to that part of the signal processing train where it cannot contribute to phase changes and errors.

[0055]After several samples have been taken over-several portions of the burst, the digital processor will execute a discrete Fourier transform algorithm and extract the phase information of the received coherent burst signal. The phase estimates are stored in memory, and averaged together with other estimates computed from subsequent and prior bursts to improve the accuracy of the final distance estimate.

[0057]This method and apparatus retains all of the benefits of the coherent burst technology discussed in the background, but improves upon the measurement accuracy, the cost of the device, and the physical volume that the device occupies.

[0058]Accordingly, the present invention provides a compact, eye-safe, low-cost, distance measuring system having 1 mm accuracy or better and also a compact, low-cost, eyesafe, velocity measuring system.

Problems solved by technology

Interferometric methods result in accuracies of less than one micrometer over ranges of up to several millimeters.

Triangulation techniques result in devices with accuracy in the micrometer range, but can only measure distances out to several inches.

However, this counter approach has quantization errors, which is remedied by random dithering or interpolation methods.

All of these pulsed TOF methods are conceptually simple, although their implementation is usually complex and expensive.

Such broadband electronic components are expensive, and drive up the overall cost of the system.

It is also difficult for pulse-TOF systems to measure velocity.

Both methods suffer from accuracy problems, and are relatively expensive to implement because they require the use of broadband electronics to ensure the fidelity of the pulses.

This is one of the major drawbacks of phase measuring methods.

Another drawback is that since the modulation occurs in a continuous-wave fashion, the average power of the carrier must be high in order to be able to obtain a significant received signal for large target distances.

High average carrier powers in the visible spectrum are not eye-safe.

Yet another drawback concerns undesirable phase delay changes of the electronic circuitry with changes in ambient environmental conditions, especially temperature.

Also, gain changes in AGC (Automatic-gain-control) circuitry will cause changes in phase as well, and these changes cannot be reliably calibrated and subtracted out with commonly used on-board reference methods.

While conceptually simple, this analog method of distance measurement is intrinsically incapable of measuring phase to the picosecond level needed for sub-millimeter accuracy.

This arises primarily from non-linearities within the mixers and amplifiers, and from drift in gain and electronic signal delay times due to changes in ambient environmental conditions.

Furthermore, since the DC signal is proportional to the cosine of the phase difference, there will be certain phase differences that result in imprecise phase estimation owing to the slow rate of change of the cosine function, most noticeably at nπ phase differences, where n is an integer.

In other words, whenever the distance to the target is approximately 802.5n millimeters, the precision of the distance measurement is questionable.

There is yet another problem with the signal output from the mixer.

If one of the signals amplitude unexpectedly changes due to noise or fluctuations in the return signal, then the interpretation of the mixer's output can lead to serious distance estimate inaccuracies.

The second heterodyne mixing is eliminated, meaning less electronic components are utilized which translates into a cost savings, but typically the SNR is somewhat poorer than heterodyne-based distance and velocity measurement.

The homodyne phase measuring rangefinder has the same drawbacks of the heterodyning rangefinder, especially as related to nonlinearities within the electronic functions, particularly the phase splitter and the mixers, as well as the imprecision at distances proportional to nπ phase difference, and gain and delay drifts with changes in environmental conditions.

Both the homodyne and heterodyne methods suffer from the aforementioned range ambiguity problem, which can be remedied by utilizing a second, lower, operating frequency whose first ambiguity is beyond the operating range of the device.

Lastly, since the laser is amplitude modulated for a relatively long period of time, and since the average laser output power must be limited to 1 mW for eye-safety considerations, the maximum range for visible laser emissions is therefore limited as well.

While the coherent burst method seems to intrinsically solve many of the problems of eye-safe distance measurement, some problems still remain.

Any errors in these differences will cause an uncalibratable distance error.

Thirdly, the output of the mixers is still a function of the amplitude of the input signals, and, lastly, uncalibrated phase delays are introduced when Automatic-gain-control methods are employed.

In sum, these errors make it very difficult to economically achieve accuracy better than 0.1″ in a compact or hand-held distance measuring unit.

For phase measurement ranging, AGC is particularly problematic because when the gain of an electronic amplification circuit is changed, an RC time constant or semiconductor junction delay time within that circuit is also usually changed, meaning the delay of the signal through that circuit is also changed.

Further, since it is unknown what the correct AGC gain should be a priori it is extremely difficult to accurately calibrate this AGC-induced variable delay and subtract it from the distance measurement.

This is a subtle yet important defect in the prior art.

But these methods just move the phase error problem from the receive signal path to the transmitter signal path.

When the power levels of the emissive devices are changed, their operating characteristics change, and they will generally introduce several picoseconds of signal delay change.

Furthermore, these errors will not be calibrated because the calibration will occur at one level of emission, and the actual distance measurement operation will occur at a different level having a different phase delay.

Also, if the transmitted signal is attenuated too much, the emission will not be visible on the target and pointing accuracy will suffer.

But this has the obvious disadvantage of increased cost and size, and reduced reliability.

However, this approach also tends to be complex and costly.

This method also suffers from increased complexity and cost.

But doubling the number of receive paths obviously comes with increased cost and complexity, and reduced reliability.

Most of these methods also suffer from serious electronic signal delay calibration problems.

This method does successfully implement an optical AGC function, but suffers from the common problems of increased cost and complexity.

Lastly, partial blocking of the collection lens can work as an optical AGC, but it too has increased complexity, reduced reliability, and should not be relied upon in and of itself because of its limited dynamic range.

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