A semi-coaxial MEMS LiDAR design with independently adjustable detection range and angular resolution

Abstract

MEMS-based LiDAR has the advantages of low cost and small volume, but suffers from finding a trade-off between the detection range and angular resolution in coaxial solution and a poor anti-interference ability in non-coaxial solution. A novel semi-coaxial MEMS LiDAR design with independently adjustable detection range and angular resolution is proposed in this paper, in which one small vertical scanning and two large synchronized horizontal scanning uniaxial MEMS mirrors are employed. In this design, the angular resolution and detection range are determined by the vertical scanning MEMS mirror and the horizontal scanning MEMS mirrors, independently. So that a larger detection range can be obtained by employing larger-size horizontal scanning mirrors and a higher angular resolution can be obtained by employing a higher-frequency vertical scanning MEMS mirror. Eventually, a miniaturized semi-coaxial MEMS LiDAR prototype with a FOV of 60°×10° (horizontal×vertical), a resolution of 301×17 (horizontal×vertical) pixels and a 19Hz frame rate is set up and the experiment results show that this design is reasonable to obtain a large detection range and high angular resolution simultaneously.