A 200 MHz 14 W Pulsed Optical Illuminator With Laser Driver ASIC and On-Chip DLL-Based Time Interpolator for Indirect Time-of-Flight Applications

The applications requiring three-dimensional information have been growing rapidly, including facial recognition, gesture recognition, auto-focus for 2D camera, self-driving autonomous vehicles, etc. Indirect Time-of-Flight (iToF) technique has been adopted widely for 3D depth imaging due to its high spatial resolution and excellent depth accuracy performance. In this brief, a 200 MHz pulsed optical Illuminator for iToF applications is reported. A 940 nm GaAs-based triple-junction VCSEL array is adopted and an integrated pulsed VCSEL driver ASIC in 180 nm BCD process is realized. Optical pulses with peak power up to 14 W can be transmitted by the laser illuminator with a maximum driving current of 6.5 A by the driver ASIC. The modulation frequency can be up to 200 MHz. Automatic optical power control (AOPC) is realized for stable optical power output and laser eye safety protection. An on-chip DLL-based time interpolator is proposed to eliminate the mechanical moving components used during system calibration. The measured absolute accuracy of the time interpolator is +/−50 ps with a resolution of 800 ps and tuning range of 49.6 ns. This brief effectively extends the measurement distance of the iToF system. The calibration efficiency is also improved with the proposed method.