Lidar peak detection using splines for autonomous driving vehicles

Abstract

A two dimensional LIDAR scanning system uses a low sampling rate (250-500 MHz) analog to digital convertor (ADC) to sample an analog signal representing a reflection of a laser beam off of an object scanned by the LIDAR device. A splining method creates a representation of the analog signal using the sample points. The representation of the analog signal is used to detect a peak magnitude of the reflected laser beam and a time at which the peak magnitude occurred relative to the emission of the laser beam. A plurality of laser emitters and associated analog sensor outputs can be multiplexed into a single signal that is sequentially sampled by a single ADC with any sampling rate, at, e.g. 500 mega-samples per second. The plurality of samples of each analog signal are a representation of each analog signal generated from the plurality of samples using a splining method.