Design and Validation of a Long-Range Streak-Tube Imaging Lidar System with High Ranging Accuracy

The Streak-Tube Imaging Lidar (STIL) has been widely used in high-precision measurement systems due to its ability to capture detailed spatial and temporal information. In this paper, we proposed a ranging measurement method that integrates a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) with a streak camera in a remote STIL system. In this method, the TDC accurately measures the trigger pulse time, while the streak camera captures high time-resolution images of the laser echo, thereby enhancing both measurement accuracy and range. A corresponding ranging model is developed for this method. To validate the system’s performance, an outdoor experiment covering a distance of up to 6 km was conducted. The results demonstrate that the system achieved a distance measurement accuracy of 0.1 m, highlighting its effectiveness in long-range applications. The experiment further confirms that the combination of STIL and TDC significantly enhances accuracy and range, making it suitable for various long-range, high-precision measurement tasks.