Comparison of flash lidar detector options

Three lidar receiver technologies using the total laser energy required to perform a set of imaging tasks are compared. The tasks are combinations of two collection types (3-D mapping from near and far), two scene types (foliated and unobscured), and three types of data products (geometry only, geometry plus 3-bit intensity, and geometry plus 6-bit intensity). The receiver technologies are based on Geiger mode avalanche photodiodes (GMAPD), linear mode avalanche photodiodes (LMAPD), and optical time-of-flight lidar, which combine rapid polarization rotation of the image and dual low-bandwidth cameras to generate a 3-D image. We choose scenarios to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various lidars. We consider HgCdTe and InGaAs variations of LMAPD cameras. The InGaAs GMAPD and the HgCdTe LMAPD cameras required the least energy to 3-D map both scenarios for bare earth, with the GMAPD taking slightly less energy. We comment on the strengths and weaknesses of each receiver technology. Six bits of intensity gray levels requires substantial energy using all camera modalities.