Design of Photonic Sensor for Driver Assistance

Abstract

Abstract

A report from National Highway Traffic Safety Association, USA, states that 100000 police reported crashes are a result of driver fatigue. This figure would be quite mind boggling for developing nations, where work periods are usually extended without conducting detailed scrutiny. Sophisticated vehicles are equipped with sensors for assisting drivers and providing them with time-critical accident alerts. However, there is a need to develop cheap and reliable sensors for 24x7 (day-night) operation to minimize and avoid accidents due to driver fatigue, compromised night vision, poor depth perception, reduced peripheral vision in dark, and headlight glare. The study discussed the available sensor technologies and proposed a sensor configuration suitable for operation under different weather and lighting conditions. To ensure road safety, covering different atmospheric (fair weather, haze, and smoke) and illumination (day/night and seasonal variation) conditions, pulsed illuminator with photodiode based FI Si CCD and In_0.53Ga_0.47As/Si hybrid CCD (charge-coupled diode) were proposed. Proposed approaches would provide both intensity and depth map of target. Architecture design of both types of devices were presented in this study. Sensor system design was presented to meet depth resolution of 1.5 m for 10 to 100 m target range. This study also discussed overall system level performance that could be achieved using the proposed detectors.

Keywords: Avalanche photodiode, CAT-I, charge-coupled diode, EB-CMOS, FPA, GmAPD, InGaAs, LED (Light-emitting diode), MCP (Micro channel plate), NIR, Si, SWIR, target reflectance, 3D imaging

 Cite this Article

Arup Banerjee, Usha S. Mehta. Design of Photonic Sensor for Driver Assistance. Journal of Electronic Design Technology. 2018; 9(2): 14–23p.