Advancement on target ranging and tracking by single-point photon counting lidar

Laser tracking with a cooperative target has been widely used in many fields and becomes increasingly important while the non-cooperative target tracking is still a challenge. In this article, a pure laser scanning, ranging and tracking system based on a single-point single photon detector (SP-SPD) is proposed, which can achieve a non-cooperative target real-time tracking without any other passive detection sensor. Through laboratory tracking experiment, we realized the real-time angular measurement, ranging and tracking of a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at a distance of about 38 m. The results show that the system and its tracking strategy have the ability to achieve a non-cooperative target real-time ranging and tracking in conditions of weak echo signals (a few tenths of a photoelectron), which means that the pure lidar tracking of the non-cooperative target in far distance become reality. It has important guiding significance and application value for a non-cooperative long-distance target ranging and tracking in the airspace. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement