Implementation of a data processing platform for real-time distance measurement with dual-comb lasers

Abstract

Absolute distance measurement with dual femtosecond comb lasers has advantages of wide-range, high-accuracy and fast speed. It combines time-of-flight and interferometric measurement. The novelty of ranging method leads to new challenges in designing the data acquisition and processing hardware system. Currently there are no available real-time data processing system for dual-comb ranging. This paper introduces our recent progress on designing and implementing such a platform. Our platform mainly contains four different function modules. First, a clock module that accept a 250MHz maximum reference clock input was introduced to generate the sample clock for A/D converter, and the module’s output clock can be delayed up to 20ns with a resolution of 714ps. Second, a high-speed data acquisition module with a 14-bit resolution and a 125 MSPS maximum sample rate was designed to convert the analog laser pulse signal to digital signal. Third, we built a real-time data processing module that allows an input of 16-bit data in the FPGA to calculate the distance from the digital signal within 83us. Finally, a data transmission module based on a 128MB DDR SDRAM and USB2.0 was added so that we can easily debug the platform in the PC. The performance of our system is evaluated in real-time. The test bench consists of two femtosecond laser sources, an optical fiber interferometer and our data processing system. The repetition frequencies of the two combs are around 50MHz, with frequency difference of 2.5kHz. The center wavelength of laser pulses is 1560nm. The target distance is from 0m to 3m. The experimental results show that our system can output measurement results at the rate of 2500 pts/s, and the measurement deviation is less than 10um.