VL6180X operation

[sbertuletti]

Posted on March 01, 2016 at 17:10

I undesratnd that ''ST Time of Flight technology uses photon detectors to measure the time it takes a generated light pulse to leave our product, then reflect from a target and come back to our device.  Knowing the time it takes, an accurate distance measurement can be calculated knowing the speed of light.''

My question is: since VL6180X calculate the distance as the time between transmitting and receiveing the infrared, how can it measure distances (e.g. about 1cm) which correspond to a time of flight in the order of picoseconds ?

Thanks

#vl6180x

[Julien NGUYEN]

Posted on March 19, 2016 at 01:14

Sorry, we can not tell you. It is a ST IP.

[John E KVAM]

Posted on January 02, 2018 at 20:08

The answer is statistics. There are almost a million small pulses of light and a rather complex statistical algorithm to figure it all out. 

- john