Modeling False Alarm Rate and Related Characteristics of Lidar Avalanche Photodiode Photoreceivers
Abstract
An analysis is presented of the error introduced into estimates of avalanche photodiode (APD) lidar performance by assuming Gaussian distribution of the APD multiplication gain. The amplitude of current pulses emitted by an APD obeys the McIntyre distribution, the tails of which diverge from the Gaussian distribution having the same mean and variance. Because extinction of false alarms requires setting a discrimination threshold far into the tail of the output distribution of an analog photoreceiver, the threshold level required to achieve a specified false-alarm rate (FAR) using an APD-based photoreceiver is often not accurately predicted by the standard FAR model of Rice.[1] Characteristics of APD-based photoreceivers are calculated using the McIntyre distribution and are compared with characteristics calculated using the Gaussian approximation.
[1] S. O. Rice, “Mathematical analysis of random noise,” Bell Syst. Tech. J. 24(1), 46–156 (1945).
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Andrew S. Huntington, George M. Williams, and Adam O. Lee “Modeling false alarm rate and related characteristics of laser ranging and LIDAR avalanche photodiode photoreceivers,” Optical Engineering 57(7), 073106 (18 July 2018). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.57.7.073106
Received: 18 March 2018; Accepted: 5 June 2018; Published: 18 July 2018