Laser range measurements using non-Gaussian pulse shapes

Many optical ranging systems currently use laser pulses of approximately Gaussian shape with widths of a few nanoseconds or less. The present paper shows that a substantial improvement in accuracy can be obtained for a given pulse length by means of laser ranging systems using conventional length (long) pulses with a sharp leading edge pulse distribution. The accuracy in such a case will improve roughly linearly with the signal strength. Order statistics is used to estimate the round-trip level travel time from the arrival time of the earliest photoelectron.