Multi-hypothesis folded pulse position modulation Single-Photon LiDAR

Single-photon LiDAR (SPL) systems face a fundamental trade-off among pulse repetition rate, unambiguous range, and hardware resource consumption in long-range detection. To surmount these limitations, we propose a Multi-Hypothesis Folded (MHF) LiDAR architecture. The system employs Golomb Ruler-constrained pseudo-random non-redundant jitter (PRNRJ) sequences to construct unique temporal fingerprints. Concurrently, a real-time multi-hypothesis folded logic directly maps photon events into a standard-range histogram, thereby effectively decoupling memory complexity from sequence length to ensure constant, low overhead and low algorithmic latency. Simulations and kilometer-scale outdoor experiments demonstrate that the MHF architecture can recover the correct ambiguity order within the designed backtracking range. By systematically suppressing self-interference sidelobe noise, the architecture achieves substantial enhancements in both signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and peak sidelobe ratio (PSLR) under strong background noise, providing a highly robust and resource-efficient pathway for next-generation long-range LiDAR.