Study of impact of noises of different nature on range profile formation in LIDAR system

In real-life lidar systems, the laser range profile (LRP) is impacted by multiple noises: background radiation, backscattering of laser radiation, speckle, atmospheric turbulence, avalanche photodiode noise, amplifier noise, quantization noise. Simulation of noises impacting LRP allows studying the performance of the system and recognition algorithm in different conditions and determining the limits of the system performance. The purpose of this work is to study noises from different sources that mainly contribute to the distortion of the laser range profile for further development of algorithms for its processing and reconstruction. The paper considers the main sources of noise impacting on the formation of the laser range profile of the object in the lidar. Mathematical models of noises from these sources are analyzed. Dependences of the contributions of different types of noises on the distance for different objects in the range from 100 to 10 000 m with the step of 100 m were obtained. Laser range profiles of the objects under study were simulated with noise at the distances of 1000 m, 3000 m, 6000 m, and 9000 m. The impact of noise from each source on the laser range profile at different distances was investigated. It is found that in LRP of the real object, consisting mainly of a set of peaks, only the amplitude of the peaks changes under the influence of noise, which makes it possible to recognize objects at long distances.