Single-photon 3D imaging reaches 10 km range

"As the need for more compact, lightweight, covert imaging methods expands for airborne and other portable platforms, single-photon-based time-of-flight (TOF) or light detection and ranging (lidar) imaging systems are gaining in popularity because their high sensitivity allows the use of smaller, lower-power laser systems. Rather than using several-tens-of-milliwatt visible laser sources, silicon single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) detectors, and pixel-by-pixel readout (pixel-wise) image-processing algorithms, researchers from Leonardo MW and Heriot-Watt University (both in Edinburgh, Scotland) have instead developed a single-photon imaging lidar system that improves on an earlier single-pixel design and uses a 10 mW eye-safe 1550 nm laser, indium gallium arsenide/indium phosphide (InGaAs/InP) SPAD detector, and algorithms specially designed for time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) to image at ranges up to 10.5 km."
From: http://www.laserfocusworld.com/artic...99&bid=1798959

See also for background on this development:
https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/abs...i=oe-21-7-8904
and
2013, 1km single photon imaging: http://www.laserfocusworld.com/artic...aging-1km.html
and
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/artic...d-ir-phot.html

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