Frequency Domain TOF: Encoding Object Depth in Modulation Frequency
This addresses challenges in high-frequency TOF sensing for applications like 3-D imaging, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing TOF and OCT concepts.
The paper tackles the problem of depth sensing in time-of-flight cameras by proposing a new architecture that encodes object depth in modulation frequency instead of phase, inspired by optical coherence tomography, and it excels when frequency bandwidth is high.
Time of flight cameras may emerge as the 3-D sensor of choice. Today, time of flight sensors use phase-based sampling, where the phase delay between emitted and received, high-frequency signals encodes distance. In this paper, we present a new time of flight architecture that relies only on frequency---we refer to this technique as frequency-domain time of flight (FD-TOF). Inspired by optical coherence tomography (OCT), FD-TOF excels when frequency bandwidth is high. With the increasing frequency of TOF sensors, new challenges to time of flight sensing continue to emerge. At high frequencies, FD-TOF offers several potential benefits over phase-based time of flight methods.