Patent ID: 7895007

Claim:
An apparatus for optically sensing a remote object, said apparatus comprising: an optical emitter module for sending optical pulses towards said object; an optical receiver module for receiving optical signals reflected by said object and for converting said optical signals into digital signal waveforms; and a control and processing unit for processing said digital signal waveforms, said control and processing unit being adapted to: (a) sample said digital signal waveforms at a predetermined number N p of range values R i , i=1, 2, 3, . . . , N p ; (b) select a function N(R i ) that gives the number of data samples to be averaged for each range value R i ; (c) compute the average of a quantity N(R i ) of signal data sampled at a first range value R i each time a quantity N(R i ) of signal waveforms has been generated; (d) update an average signal amplitude previously measured at said range R i with the result computed above; and repeating step (c) for each range value R i , whereby the response time of said apparatus is minimized for each range R i by averaging only the quantity N(R i ) of data sampled at each range R i that is required to get a desired signal to noise ratio at each range R i .