Planetary Landing Lidar

Fibertek, Inc. a critical components of a proposed Planetary Landing LIDAR System (PLLS).nbsp; Compared to the PLLS used on OSIRIS-Rex, our architecture achieves higher speed and higher resolution while significantly reducing size, weight, and power (SWAP).nbsp; This is achieved by using a much more sensitive sensor: an array of Silicon Geiger-mode avalanche photo diodes (Gm-APDs) which can count single photon returns. This permits lower power high rep-rate lasers and smaller apertures for savings in SWAP as well as increased acquisition rates for higher resolution and faster mapping.nbsp; In addition there are the usual benefits of Silicon including warm operation, ease of manufacturing, and intrinsically better radiation tolerance.Geiger-mode LIDAR requires oversampling and statistical analysis.nbsp; The required processing capability and latency has proven a challenge.nbsp; Fibertek has developed a novel architecture for Gm-LIDAR which solves this problem.nbsp; We have demonstrated the ability to process Geiger mode data faster than the sensor can acquire it.nbsp; In this effort we will develop space-flight traceable low-swap FPGA-based data acquisition hardware.nbsp; We will then port our solution to FPGA and demonstrate real time processing using simulated data.nbsp; Demonstrating the ability to map a 2000x2000 pixel scene in less than 2 seconds, our data acquisition hardware will prove the feasibility of this approach for a low SWAP high-speed, high-resolution PLLS.