Patent ID: 7643955

Claim:
A method for measuring distance, comprising: transmitting N≧2 periodic signals having half-wavelengths Λ 1 > . . . >Λ N >0, at separate times; sampling received signals at equitemporal sampling times for generating and storing sampled values, the received signals of K targets having reflected and superposed signal components and sampling being effected M≧2 times per signal period; and simultaneously determining distances D 1 , . . . , D K ε to the K targets from the sampled values exclusively by a phase measuring principle, wherein on determination of the distances, the number K of targets is specified in the case of a known number K≧2 of targets or determined from the sampled values in the case of an unknown number of targets and a statistical parameter estimation problem based on a mathematical signal model is solved so that the inequalities D − ≦D k <D + are true for l≦k≦K, wherein specified distances D − ε and D + ε with D − <D + establish the measuring range of a rangefinder.