Laser range imaging using the self-mixing effect in a laser diode

In this work, we implemented a three-dimensional (3-D) laser range imaging system using the well-known self-mixing effect in a frequency-modulated semiconductor laser diode. The system generates 3-D point sets of a scene, using a single semiconductor laser diode serving both as the light source and as the detector. The experimental imaging accuracy was measured to be 0.87 mm at a distance of 0.55 m after some filtering. This paper focuses on the theoretical description of the self-mixing effect by presenting a survey of the existing literature as it applies to our specific implementation, followed by some experimental results.