Advances in Engineering Advances in Engineering features breaking research judged by Advances in Engineering advisory team to be of key importance in the Engineering field. Papers are selected from over 10,000 published each week from most peer reviewed journals.
Optics Express, Vol. 21, Issue 7, pp. 8904-8915 (2013)
Aongus McCarthy, Nils J. Krichel, Nathan R. Gemmell, Ximing Ren, Michael G. Tanner, Sander N. Dorenbos, Val Zwiller, Robert H. Hadfield, and Gerald S. Buller.
Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences, and Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, UK &
Current address: Helia Photonics Ltd, Rosebank Park, Livingston EH54 7EJ, UK &
Current address: School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK &
Kalvi Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CJ Delft, The Netherlands.
Abstract
This paper highlights a significant advance in time-of-flight depth imaging: by using a scanning transceiver which incorporated a free-running, low noise superconducting nanowire single-photon detector, we were able to obtain centimeter resolution depth images of low-signature objects in daylight at stand-off distances of the order of one kilometer at the relatively eye-safe wavelength of 1560 nm. The detector used had an efficiency of 18% at 1 kHz dark count rate, and the overall system jitter was ~100 ps. The depth images were acquired by illuminating the scene with an optical output power level of less than 250 µW average, and using per-pixel dwell times in the millisecond regime.
© 2013 OSA
