On the research of avalanche photodiodes-based heterodyne in FM/cw laser rangefinder

An avalanche photodiodes (APDs)-based heterodyne technique for FM/cw laser rangefinder (FM/cw LRF) is described. Based on a modified APDs model, the properties of heterodyne are theoretically analyzed and experimentally demonstrated under different illumination intensities and multiplications, both the amplitude and the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the difference frequency signal are inversely proportional to the unmultiplied current at a high multiplication and are proportional to the square of multiplication at a low multiplication.