Time-of-flight distance measurement system and method for dual-shared TDC circuit

Abstract

The invention discloses a time-of-flight distance measurement system for a dual-shared TDC circuit. The time-of-flight distance measurement system comprises an emitter, an acquisition device and a processing circuit wherein the emitter comprises first and second light sources configured to emit pulsed light beams; the acquisition device comprises a first super-pixel and a second super-pixel, the first super-pixel acquires photons emitted from the first light source and reflected by an object and forms a photon signal, and the second super-pixel acquires photons emitted from the second light source and reflected by an object and forms a photon signal; the processing circuit comprises a TDC circuit and a histogram circuit, and the TDC circuit receives and calculates time intervals of the photon signals and converts the time intervals into time codes; the histogram circuits is used for counting and drawing a histogram on an internal corresponding time unit based on the time codes; and theTDC circuit comprises at least one TDC circuit unit, and all pixels in the first super-pixel and the second super-pixel share the TDC circuit unit. According to the time-of-flight distance measurement system and the time-of-flight distance measurement method, all pixel units of a plurality of super-pixels share the TDC circuit unit, so that the problem of super-pixel overlapping caused by deviation in multi-frame measurement due to parallax is solved, and high-precision time-of-flight measurement is realized.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to the technical field of computers, in particular to a time-of-flight distance measuring system and a measuring method for double-sharing TDC circuits. Background technique [0002] The Time of Flight (TOF) method calculates the distance of an object by measuring the flight time of the light beam in space. It is widely used in consumer electronics, unmanned driving, AR / VR and other fields. [0003] Distance measurement systems based on the time-of-flight principle, such as time-of-flight depth cameras and lidar systems, often include a light source transmitter and a receiver. Calculate the distance of the object by calculating the time required for the light beam to be reflected and received. [0004] At present, LiDAR based on the time-of-flight method mainly includes mechanical and non-mechanical types. The mechanical type realizes the distance measurement of a 360-degree large field of view by rotating the base. The advanta...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, the improvement of resolution, frame rate, and accuracy often needs to rely on the circuit scale of the receiving end and the improvement of modulation and demodulation methods, but increasing the circuit scale will increase power consumption, signal-to-noise ratio, and cost; in addition, it will also increase on-chip storage. It has brought serious challenges to mass production; the current mode of modulation and demodulation is also difficult to achieve high precision, low power consumption and other requirements

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