Patent ID: 7463181

Claim:
A method of detecting an object in a target area, with interference suppression, said method comprising the features: a) emitting a sequence of forward pulses into said target area so as to impinge on said object and reflect from said object to form reflected pulses, wherein said forward pulses are emitted successively at respective pulse emission times with variable time spacings respectively between successive ones of said forward pulses; b) randomly setting respective durations of said variable time spacings in accordance with a pseudo-noise encoding within a predetermined limited duration range; c) receiving, with a receiver, said reflected pulses to form a received reflection signal; d) detecting said reflected pulses of said received reflection signal within plural time windows that are respectively time-referenced in succession from each respective one of said pulse emission times of each respective one of said forward pulses, so that said time windows respectively represent distance gates of successive distance ranges between said receiver and said object; e) matching a time-referencing of said time windows respectively to said variable time spacings for said successive ones of said forward pulses forming successive ones of said reflected pulses; and f) carrying out at least sampling, digitizing and digital filtering of said received reflection signal respectively in each one of said time windows, wherein said digital filtering comprises a non-linear digital filtering adapted to suppress transient interferences and to produce filtered output values in a filtered reflection signal.