Integrated photonic-electronic platform for real-time analog data processing in LiDARs

Mahsa Salmani; Sreenil Saha; Armaghan Eshaghi

doi:10.1117/12.2633086

3 October 2022 Integrated photonic-electronic platform for real-time analog data processing in LiDARs

Mahsa Salmani, Sreenil Saha, Armaghan Eshaghi

Proceedings Volume 12204, Emerging Topics in Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) 2022; 1220405 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2633086
Event: SPIE Nanoscience + Engineering, 2022, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Light, detection and ranging (LiDAR), has been emerging as a powerful tool for applications with accurate and reliable perception requirements, e.g., autonomous driving which needs a combination of long-range and high spatial resolution together with a real-time performance. Processing the raw LiDAR data, which is a large-dimensional unstructured 3D point cloud, is computationally costly due to the nature of the algorithms used for processing the point clouds. In particular, the neural networks employed for LiDAR data processing comprise several layers, for each of which multiplications of matrices with large sizes need to be performed. In this case, graphics processing units (GPUs) cannot be used as real-time standalone devices for hardware acceleration because they have high execution time due to their dependency on a central processing unit (CPU) for data offloading and scheduling the execution of the algorithms used to process point clouds. To address the aforementioned challenges, we propose an efficient co-design of an analog neural network (ANN) and a hybrid CMOS-Photonics platform for LiDAR systems. The proposed architecture exploits the high bandwidth and low latency of optical computation to significantly improve the computational efficiency. In particular, in our proposed architecture, a CMOS control chip integrated with a photonic broadcast-and-weight architecture is interfaced with LiDAR to perform real-time data processing and high-dimensional matrix multiplications. Moreover, by processing the raw LiDAR data in the analog domain, the proposed hybrid electro-optic computing platform minimizes the number of data converters in LiDAR systems.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Mahsa Salmani, Sreenil Saha, and Armaghan Eshaghi "Integrated photonic-electronic platform for real-time analog data processing in LiDARs", Proc. SPIE 12204, Emerging Topics in Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) 2022, 1220405 (3 October 2022); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2633086

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available