ACCURACY OF DISTANCE DETERMINATION BY RANGE-INTENSITY CORRELATION METHODS FOR NON-RECTANGULAR ILLUMINATION PULSES

Abstract

The accuracy analysis of distance determination by range-intensity correlation methods in the case of arbitrary pulse shape is performed. It is shown that the absolute error is proportional to the pulse duration t_L. For the trapezoidal shape of the pulse, which is a reasonable approximation of the real pulse shape, analytical estimates of the extreme error and range at which it is realized are obtained. For the model of trapezoidal pulses, maximum of the distance absolute error corresponds to extremely asymmetric pulses and is 10% of the spatial pulse length t_Lc, where c is the light velocity. At the same time, symmetrical pulses produce an error due to the pulse non-rectangularity approximately two times smaller. Since the trapezoidal shape is able to reproduce qualitatively the shape of almost any real pulse, it is very likely that the trapezoidal pulse model estimates the maximum possible error.