DISTANCE MEASURING SENSOR AND METHOD FOR RECORDING AND DETERMINING THE DISTANCE OF AN OBJECT

A distance-measuring sensor (10) is provided for detecting and determining the distance of objects (18) in a monitored zone comprising a transmitter (12) for transmitting transmitted pulses; a receiver (20) for generating a received signal from the transmitted pulses remitted in the monitored zone; a first comparator unit (36a) for digitizing the received signal with reference to a first threshold; and a control and evaluation unit (30) which is configured to transmit a plurality of transmitted pulses via the transmitter (12), to collect the received signals thereupon generated by the receiver (20) in a histogram and to determine a received time point from the histogram and thus to determine a measured value for the signal transit time from the sensor (10) to the object (18). In this respect, a second comparator unit (36b) is provided for digitizing the received signal with reference to a second threshold, wherein the first comparator unit (36a), the second comparator unit (36b) and the control and evaluation unit (30) are configured to acquire three digital states of a respective section of the received signal with reference to the first threshold and to weight the contributions of the section to the histogram in dependence on the digital state.