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I. INTRODUCTION
RANGE finders based on a time-of-flight (TOF) method
are a preferred choice for distance measurements with wide
working range [1]-[4]. In the TOF range finders, the distance
to a target is determined by finding the roundtrip TOF of a
light pulse. If the distance between the light source and
target is very long, the range accuracy is affected by the
attenuation of the light pulse power. Furthermore the light
signal intensity is also affected by weather conditions such
as in the rain or fog. The light signal attenuation causes a
delay time in a TOF measurement circuit and a resulting
measurement error because the small signal amplitude has a
small driving force in the amplifier used in the TOF
measurement circuit, causing a longer response time. On the
other hand, if the distance between the light source to target
is very short, a large amount of photocurrent signal due to
the reflected light pulse with large optical power may cause
the saturation of the signal in the TOF measurement circuit.
These characteristics in the TOF measurements used in
conventional systems make the development of a range
finder with very wide working range difficult.
This paper proposes a TOF measurement circuit suitable
for a range finder with very wide working range. The
proposed circuit technique uses a cascaded multiple-stage
amplifier together with comparators used at the output of
each stage for expanding the dynamic range of measuring
Manuscript received October 12, 2011.
*
Corresponding author
Vo (1) =
1
I ph dt
Cf1
(2)
C. Circuit Simulations
The behavior of the cascaded multiple-stage amplifier is
simulated by a circuit simulator SPECTRE. In the circuit
simulation, device parameters of a 0.25m standard CMOS
process technology are used. Figure 5 shows amplifier
circuit which is used in the TOF measurement circuit of Fig.
3. The feedback capacitance and the input grounded
capacitance of each stage are set to be 0.1pF and 0.9pF
respectively. The resulting gain of all the stage (1 + Ci,n/Cf,n)
is set to be 10. Figure 6 shows the simulation results for the
delay times of the 6 amplifier outputs as a function of
photocurrent at the receiver. In this simulation, the delay
times at the outputs of the 6-stage amplifier are measured for
the signal current intensity range from 10nA to 10mA. The
pulse width of the input photocurrent is set to be 10n second.
In the range from 10nA to 10mA, the delay times of all the
stages are measured at 30 points of intensity level. For better
measurement accuracy and stability, the delay time of the
amplifier should be as small as possible. In high
photocurrent level, the output of earlier stages has smaller
delay time. In small photocurrent level, the output of earlier
stages has large delay and may fail to detect the signal at the
comparator because the amplitude does not reach to the
measurement threshold. On the other hand, the output of
latter stages which has a large gain has smaller delay time in
small photo current region and can cover down to very small
photocurrent level of 10nA. The results of Fig. 6 suggests
that the delay time which includes the TOF of light pulse can
be measured in wide dynamic range by selecting proper
outputs of the 6-stage amplifier. This is why the TOF range
finder using the multiple-stage amplifier enables to expand
the dynamic range. One can notice in the results of Fig. 6
that the delay time variation of the 6-stage amplifier
becomes gradually small when the amount of photocurrent
signal is larger than approximately 30A, and it is almost
unchanged when a photocurrent signal exceeds 1mA. The
multiple outputs can be used for estimating the delay time of
the TOF measurement circuits including the frontend charge
amplifier, multiple-stage amplifier, and comparators as
described in the next section.
III. TOF ESTIMATION USING MULTIPLE-STAGE
AMPLIFIER OUTPUTS
A. Estimation of Delay Time of Measurement Circuits
As explained in the previous section, the TOF
measurement circuit using the multiple-stage amplifier
enables to obtain multiple time signals which include the
TOF of light pulse and the delay time of the measurement
circuits themselves. The measured total delay time of the nth stage output Tm(n) is given by,
(6)
Tm =
(n) TTOF + Td (n)
where TTOF is the time of flight of the light pulse between a
target and the TOF range finder, and Td(n) is the delay time
at the n-th stage output of the measurement circuits.
Obviously, the measured total delay time of the (n-1)-th
stage output Tm(n-1) is given by,
(7)
Tm (n 1)= TTOF + Td (n 1)
By taking the difference between (6) and (7), we have
Tm (n 1) Tm (n=
) Td (n 1) Td (n)
(8)
Td (n)
Equation (8) means that the difference of delay time of the
two amplifier outputs is independent of the TOF. Figure 7
shows Tm(n-1)-Tm(n) as a function of photocurrent. Using the
result of Fig. 7, the relationship between Td(n) and the
photocurrent is uniquely pre-determined, and it is expressed
as a function of photocurrent, i.e.,
(9)
Td (n) =
f , n ( I ph )
Using Tm(n) =Tm(n-1)-Tm(n), the amount of photocurrent
can be expressed as
(10)
I ph =f ,1n (Td (n)) =f ,1n (Tm (n))
where
Td (n) = f n ( I ph )
(11)
Obviously,
f=
f n 1 ( I ph ) f n ( I ph ) .
, n ( I ph )
(12)
=
TTOF Tm (n) Td (n)
=
Tm (n) f n ( f ,1n (Tm (n))
(13)
TTOF =
1 N
TTOF (n)
N 1 n=2
(14)
IV. CONCLUSIONS
(a)
(b)
Fig. 8. Simulations for range measurements (a). Measured Range of Ideal
and Simulated. (b). Measurement Error.
[4]