On the Joint Effect of Disorientation and Misalignment on LiDAR Systems

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems are a key technology for sensing in terms of ranging and velocity of a mobile target for various environments, such as terrestrial, satellite, underwater, etc. However, the turbulence-induced fading and pointing errors are inherent detrimental effects in laser communications. In this letter, we study both the disorientation and misalignment errors of LiDAR systems over Gamma-Gamma turbulence fading channels. The analysis puts emphasis on either time of flight (ToF) or frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) LiDAR ranging and velocity precision and provides the theoretical frameworks for deriving the aforementioned key performance indicators. In more detail, we extract closed-form Cramér-Rao Lower Bounds (CRLBs) for ranging and velocity precision and validation via Monte Carlo simulations. As a final step, we extract the operational bounds of both ToF and FMCW LiDARs due to the joint effect of disorientation and misalignment.