Compressive sensing–based optical two-frequency continuous wave time-of-flight ranging system

Abstract

A time-of-flight–based ranging system constructed using an intensity-modulated light source and photodetectors (PDs) is proposed. In the proposed system, the carrier wave, which comprises two cosine waves with different frequencies in the megahertz range, is reconstructed from a few samples obtained using PDs with kilohertz sampling rates using the compressive sensing technique. This allows the system to measure distances with very high accuracy and extends the measurement range while maintaining the accuracy of an existing system that uses a single-frequency carrier.