Patent ID: 11942988
Assignee: ATTOCHRON, LLC
Field: Telecommunications (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 11:
12. A laser ranging system, the laser ranging system comprising:
a continuous wave optical source configured to generate a beam, wherein the laser ranging system is configured to gate the beam of light into a series of light pulses;
a photoreceiver, the photoreceiver having:
a detection window duration of 1 nanosecond or less; and
a detection condition, wherein the photoreceiver is configured to indicate whether a received optical energy during a given detection window satisfies the detection condition, thereby extracting specific encoded data from the received optical energy;

wherein:
the series of light pulses comprises a first pulse having a coherence length of less than 400 microns;
when the first pulse travels through a variably refractive medium, photons in the first pulse are refracted to travel along different ray paths having different lengths to the photoreceiver;
the photons of the first pulse arrive at the photoreceiver according to a temporal distribution curve that depends, at least in part, on a duration of the first pulse and lengths of the different ray paths taken by the photons in the first pulse to the photoreceiver;
a full-width-at-half-maximum value (FWHM value) of the temporal distribution curve is greater than a coherence time value equal to the coherence length of the first pulse divided by a speed of light through the variably refractive medium;
the detection window duration of the photoreceiver is greater than the FWHM value of the temporal distribution curve; and
the laser ranging system is configured to transmit the series of light pulses toward a surface, receive at least a portion of the series of light pulses that have been reflected by the surface, and, based on a time of flight of the received portion of the series of light pulses, determine a distance of at least a portion of the surface from the laser ranging system.