TOF-LIDAR signal processing using the CFAR detector

Abstract

In recent years, the lidar sensor has been receiving greater attention as being one of the prospective sensors for future intelligent vehicles. In order to enable advanced applications in a variety of road environments, it has become more important to detect various objects at a wider distance. Therefore, in this research we have focused on lidar signal processing to detect low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) targets and proposed a higher sensitive detector. The detector is based on the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) processing framework in which an additional functionality of adaptive intensity integration is incorporated. Fundamental results through static experiments have shown a significant advantage in the detection performance in comparison to a conventional detector with constant thresholding.