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US 10,175,343 B2Granted
Rangefinder with a laser-like light source
AssigneeHexagon Technology Center GmbH
InventorsReto Stutz, Jürg Hinderling
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Abstract
Some embodiments of the invention may relate to a rangefinder, in particular for a laser scanner, laser tracker, profiler, theodolite, or a total station. In a special embodiment of the invention, the light source of the rangefinder—provided for the emission of pulsed light signals—is configured here as an optical fiber amplifier (e.g. an EDFA, i.e. erbium-doped fiber amplifier) which is optically pumped by a superluminescent diode (SLD) operated in a pulsed manner.
Claims23
An electro-optical rangefinder comprising:
- light emission means for emitting at least one light signal, in particular for emitting a pulsed light signal, the light emission means comprising:
- a spectrally broadband light source as primary light source, and
- an optical amplifier disposed downstream of the primary light source, in particular wherein an actively pumped medium of the optical amplifier serves as a light amplifier without a resonator, in particular wherein the optical amplifier is provided and embodied precisely to be operated with a modulation sequence with a short and/or long duty cycle;
- a receiver for detecting the light signal scattered back from a target object;
- and
- a control and evaluation component for determining a distance to the target object, in particular wherein the determination is based upon the pulse time-of-flight measurement method.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.