Ultra storage-efficient time digitizer for pseudorandom single photon counter implemented on a field-programmable gate array.

Pseudorandom single photon counting is a novel time-resolved optical measurement method, which is advantageous over convention techniques in terms of data-acquisition speed and system cost. As a critical component of the pseudorandom single photon counter, the photon arriving time digitizer should be storage efficient for a high photon counting rate, while maintaining good time accuracy. We report an ultra storage-efficient time digitizer for a pseudorandom single photon counter in this paper, which is based on the asynchronous serial communication and can store the arriving time of every photon in 1-b memory space.

Pseudo-random single photon counting for time-resolved optical measurement.

We report a new time-resolved optical measurement method which combines single photon counting and the spread spectrum time-resolved optical measurement method. A laser diode modulated with pseudo-random bit sequences replaces the short pulse laser used in conventional time-resolved optical systems, while a single photon detector records the pulse sequence in response to the modulated excitation. Periodic cross-correlation is used to retrieve the impulse response.