Lidar peak detection using time-to-digital converter and multi-pixel photon counter for autonomous driving vehicles

A LIDAR scanning system uses a combination of a time-to-digital conversion (TDC) device and a multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC) to determine the peak location (time) and magnitude of a reflection of a laser beam off of an object. A configurable trigger threshold of the TDC indicates that a sufficient number of MPPC pixels have triggered that the peak detection module should begin sampling and storing MPPC counts of triggered pixels. When the light received from the reflected laser beam falls below the trigger threshold of the TDC, the MPPC stops sampling the MPPC counts. The peak magnitude of the reflection of the laser beam is determined from the highest sample count of the MPPC. A time at which the peak magnitude occurred is determined as the midpoint of TDC trigger points. The peak magnitude MPPC count is correlated to an intensity value.