Range resolution improvement of range-gated vision system in backscattering hazy environments

摘要

A range-gated vision system simultaneously provides two-dimensional and range images because its light intensity contains the reflectance as well as depth information. The range-resolution of the system is usually inversely proportional to the induced backscattering noise. In this paper, a range imaging technique is proposed to precisely measure range information from highly backscattering foggy environments. A windowed center-of-mass position extracted from the peak area of a cross-correlation signal of two signals, a Gaussian window signal in reduced size and a range-gated signal according to distance, is adopted as the range depth. The proposed measuring technique provides more robust and more precise range information than conventional measuring techniques for hazy targets by virtue of the reduction of backscattering bias noise usually induced by airborne particles. The experimental results and the signal processing procedures to acquire precise range information from hazy targets are described in this paper.