Compressive Sensing-Based Three-Dimensional Laser Imaging with Dual Illumination

Low-cost 3D imaging, particularly by using laser detection and ranging (LIDAR), is important for applications such as object recognition, surface mapping, and machine vision. Conventional time-of-flight LIDAR uses a scanned laser to obtain the intensity and range of targets, which requires a narrow bandwidth of illumination and high-speed synchronizers. This paper presents a nonscanning prototype of a pulse-width-free 3D LIDAR which combines single-pixel imaging and diffractive optical elements, for the first time to our knowledge. Compressive sensing techniques are used to measure echo pulses from the target and reconstruct the intensity map of the target scene. Diffractive optical elements are also applied to generate structured illumination and the depth map of the target scene can be obtained from laser spot extraction. The simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed prototype as well as illustrate its superiority where traditional 3D imaging methods are unavailable or limited. This novel prototype has advantages of low cost and flexible structure at wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum and will be highly interesting for practical applications.