3d sensing depth camera

A system for 3D depth sensing:

• a light source that is swept across frequencies from a first frequency to a last frequency;
• a beam splitter system that splits the light source into at least a reference beam and a sample beam;
• a detector that collects an interference signal between light returning from the reference beam and the sample beam, the interference signal forming an interferogram;
• a sample arm comprising a scanner for beam scanning in a first axis and a diffractive optical element for spectrally encoded scanning along a second axis, wherein for each spectral window of the light source, the interferogram comprises depth information at a different position along the second axis;
• and
• a processing system coupled to the detector, the processing system comprising a hardware processor and a memory storing instructions that when executed by the hardware processor direct the processing system to:
• receive the interferogram of each frequency sweep of the light source from the detector;
• for each interferogram, apply a windowed spectral estimator at a particular spectral window size with zero-padding and according to a specified lateral sampling approach by:
• sampling the interferogram according to the specified lateral sampling approach;
• and
• for each spectral window sample of the interferogram, applying zero-padding to a particular number of samples and applying a spectral estimator to the zero-padded spectral window sample to generate a signal for a pixel;
• performing peak localization analysis on the signal to identify a dominant peak;
• and if the dominant peak is identified, assigning a depth value according to a corresponding depth position of the dominant peak for the pixel, otherwise, assigning the pixel as a background;
• and
• provide a depth map of the pixels comprising the assigned depth values.