Modeling and Analysis of a Long-Range Target Localization Problem Based on an XS Anode Single-Photon Detector

Abstract

With the development of space detection technology, the detection of long-range dark and weak space targets has become an important issue in space detection. Cross-strip anode photon imaging detectors can detect weak light signals with extremely low dark count rates and are well suited to applications in long-range target detection systems. Since cross-strip anode detectors are expensive to develop and fabricate, a theoretical analysis of the detection process is necessary before fabrication. During the detection process, due to the dead time of the detector, some photon-generated signals are aliased, and the true arrival position of the photon cannot be obtained. These aliased signals are usually removed directly in the conventional research. But in this work, we find that these aliased signals are not meaningless and can be applied to center of mass detection. Specifically, we model the probabilistic mechanisms of the detection data, compute the average photon positions using aliased and non-aliased data and prove that our method provides a lower variance compared to the conventional method, which only uses non-aliased data. Simulation experiments are designed to further verify the effectiveness of the aliasing data for detecting the center of mass. The simulation results support that our method of utilizing the aliasing data provides more accurate detection results than that of removing the aliasing data.