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Insight LiDAR has developed a Digital Coherent LiDAR which is a chip-scale, long-range LiDAR sensor targeted at the emerging autonomous vehicle market. The new product is based on Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) technology offering a number of unique advantages over the current generation of Time-of-Flight (ToF) LiDAR sensors. Insight LiDAR is a spinout of Insight Photonic Solutions, a leader in the design and manufacture of highly-linear, swept-wavelength laser sources for imaging and sensing applications.

Autonomous vehicles require a variety of sensors to interpret the world around them and to make proper, timely decisions.  While ninety-three percent of autonomous vehicle experts interviewed by UBS believe that LiDAR is a prerequisite for autonomous vehicles, today’s legacy LiDAR sensors either do not provide the performance or the price needed for wide-scale deployment. Legacy LiDAR either does not have the ability to see faint objects at distance, or it cannot meet industry cost targets, due to expensive laser sources and fiber amplifiers.

Insight’s Digital Coherent LiDAR was developed based on more sensitive FMCW detection techniques and software-programmable waveforms that have been used in FMCW radar for over 40 years. The LiDAR’s FMCW sensor offers 10-100x higher sensitivity than Time-of-Flight LiDAR while simultaneously offering direct Doppler velocity measurement. The higher sensitivity, enabled by FMCW detection, drives Digital Coherent LiDAR’s long-range capability; 200 m to dim (<10 percent reflectivity) objects like car tires, and 250 m or more to vehicle bodies, trees and other obstacles.

Direct Doppler velocity measurement enables much faster recognition and classification of objects, especially critical for safe level 4 and 5 autonomous vehicle operation. Digital Coherent LiDAR is further enhanced by Insight’s proprietary true solid-state, fast-axis scan architecture. This unique feature enables Insight LiDAR to both precisely steer the beam and encrypt the critical fast-scan axis through software alone, with no moving parts.

According to Michael Minneman, CEO of Insight Photonic Solutions, Level 4 and 5 autonomy need a level of performance, range, resolution, frame rate, and immunity that legacy ToF sensors just can’t deliver. Couple that to cost goals that can only be met with a true all-semiconductor solution and there comes the challenge. Insight has the huge advantage that they have been designing and manufacturing the core technology in this FMCW LiDAR sensor for more than 10 years.

LiDAR designers have long known the advantages of FMCW detection, but the critical laser sources have been large and expensive. Over the past ten years, Insight has developed and refined unique, patented methods to manufacture and control the laser sources driving world-class performance in a tiny chip-scale package.

Key Features:

• Long Range – 200 m to 10 percent R targets at full scan speed with no averaging or processing
• Direct Doppler velocity in every pixel
• Complete immunity from sunlight and other LiDAR
• True solid-state, flexible fast-axis scanning
• Ultra-high resolution to 0.02 x 0.02 deg
• Low-cost chip scale, all-semiconductor approach