CN113241583A

CN113241583A - Optical signal emitting device, optical signal sensor and electronic equipment

Info

Publication number: CN113241583A
Application number: CN202110489378.2A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 戴阳
Original assignee: Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp Ltd
Current assignee: Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp Ltd
Priority date: 2021-05-06
Filing date: 2021-05-06
Publication date: 2021-08-10
Anticipated expiration: 2041-05-06
Also published as: CN113241583B

Abstract

The utility model provides an optical signal transmitting device, optical signal sensor and electronic equipment relates to circuit technical field. The optical signal transmitting apparatus includes: n transmitting units, wherein at least one variable connection transmitting unit is included, and N is a positive integer not less than 2; m drive circuits, which can work at different time, wherein M is a positive integer not less than 2 and not more than N; a switching member for switching the variable connection transmitting unit to be connected to a different driving circuit; wherein each emission unit is driven with at most one at any emission time. The present disclosure improves the problem of high power consumption of optical signal transmitting devices in the prior art.

Description

Optical signal emitting device, optical signal sensor and electronic equipment

Technical Field

The present disclosure relates to the field of circuit technologies, and in particular, to an optical signal transmitting device, an optical signal sensor, and an electronic apparatus.

Background

With the development of technologies such as 3D imaging and laser radar, the transmission and reception of optical signals are widely applied in the fields of face recognition and the like. For example, at present, a vertical cavity surface emitting laser is usually configured in a sensor (Time-of-Flight) to implement emission of optical signals, however, an optical signal emitting apparatus in the prior art often emits optical signals based on emitting points arranged in advance, the number of the emitting points is large and the emitting points are regularly arranged, and in some special application scenarios, for example, when only a certain position needs to be deeply detected, unnecessary power consumption loss is caused by emitting signals through a large number of the emitting points; in addition, the regular arrangement of the distribution points may cause interference and the like when working simultaneously, which affects the transmission and reception effects of the optical signals.

Disclosure of Invention

The present disclosure provides an optical signal transmitting device, an optical signal sensor and an electronic device, so as to at least improve the problem of higher power consumption of the optical signal transmitting device in the prior art to a certain extent.

Additional features and advantages of the disclosure will be set forth in the detailed description which follows, or in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the disclosure.

According to a first aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided an optical signal transmitting apparatus including: n transmitting units, wherein at least one variable connection transmitting unit is included, and N is a positive integer not less than 2; m drive circuits, which can work at different time, wherein M is a positive integer not less than 2 and not more than N; a switching member for switching the variable connection transmitting unit to be connected to a different driving circuit; wherein each emission unit is connected with at most one driving circuit at any light-emitting time, and when the driving circuit works, the emission unit connected with the driving circuit is driven to emit light signals.

According to a second aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided an optical signal sensor comprising: an optical signal transmitting apparatus according to the first aspect; an optical signal receiving device; wherein the optical signal receiving apparatus includes: and the N receiving units correspond to the N transmitting units in the optical signal transmitting device and are used for receiving optical reflection signals reflected by the optical signal transmitted to the environment by the optical signal transmitting device.

According to a third aspect of the present disclosure, an electronic device is provided, and the processor is configured to execute the optical signal transmitting apparatus of the first aspect and the optical signal sensor of the second aspect and possible implementations thereof via executing the executable instructions.

The technical scheme of the disclosure has the following beneficial effects:

n transmitting units, wherein at least one variable connection transmitting unit is included, and N is a positive integer not less than 2; m drive circuits, which can work at different time, wherein M is a positive integer not less than 2 and not more than N; a switching member for switching the variable connection transmitting unit to be connected to different driving circuits; wherein each emission unit is connected with at most one driving circuit at any light emitting time, and when the driving circuit works, the emission unit connected with the driving circuit is driven to emit light signals. On one hand, the present exemplary embodiment provides a new optical signal transmitting apparatus, which may include N transmitting units, where the transmitting units include a variable connection transmitting unit capable of being switched by a switching element to connect to different driving circuits, and in practical applications, the variable connection transmitting unit may be controlled to connect to different driving circuits according to specific scene requirements, so as to randomly control the variable connection transmitting unit to transmit optical signals at different times, and have strong pertinence and high efficiency in some specific application scenes, for example, in an auto-focusing scene, when only fewer transmitting units are required to transmit optical signals, a small number of variable transmitting units may be controlled to connect to corresponding driving circuits, so that detection of depth information and the like may be achieved; according to the embodiment, the driving circuit can be controlled to be connected with different variable connection transmitting units to transmit the optical signals according to different scene requirements, so that the problem of extra power consumption loss caused by invalid transmission of the optical signals by the transmitting units can be effectively solved, and hardware power consumption is greatly saved; on the other hand, the variable connection transmitting unit can be switched to be connected with different driving circuits, flexible arrangement is achieved, and therefore the problem that signals in space are interfered is solved.

It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the disclosure.

Drawings

The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate embodiments consistent with the present disclosure and together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the disclosure. It is to be understood that the drawings in the following description are merely exemplary of the disclosure, and that other drawings may be derived from those drawings by one of ordinary skill in the art without the exercise of inventive faculty.

Fig. 1 is a block diagram showing an electronic apparatus in the present exemplary embodiment;

fig. 2 is a block diagram showing an optical signal transmitting apparatus in the present exemplary embodiment;

FIG. 3 shows a schematic diagram of a transmitting unit in the present exemplary embodiment;

fig. 4 shows a schematic diagram of another transmitting unit in the present exemplary embodiment;

fig. 5 shows a schematic diagram of the connection of the transmitting unit in the present exemplary embodiment;

FIG. 6 shows a schematic diagram of another transmission unit connection in this exemplary embodiment;

FIG. 7 shows a schematic diagram of an emitted optical signal spot in the present exemplary embodiment;

FIG. 8 shows a schematic diagram of another emitted optical signal spot in this exemplary embodiment;

fig. 9 is a block diagram showing an optical signal sensor in the present exemplary embodiment;

fig. 10 is a diagram showing a structure of an optical signal receiving apparatus in the present exemplary embodiment;

fig. 11 is a block diagram showing an optical signal processing system in the present exemplary embodiment;

fig. 12 shows a schematic diagram of a further emitted optical signal spot in the present exemplary embodiment.

Detailed Description

Example embodiments will now be described more fully with reference to the accompanying drawings. Example embodiments may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the examples set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the concept of example embodiments to those skilled in the art. The described features, structures, or characteristics may be combined in any suitable manner in one or more embodiments. In the following description, numerous specific details are provided to give a thorough understanding of embodiments of the disclosure. One skilled in the relevant art will recognize, however, that the subject matter of the present disclosure can be practiced without one or more of the specific details, or with other methods, components, devices, steps, and the like. In other instances, well-known technical solutions have not been shown or described in detail to avoid obscuring aspects of the present disclosure.

Furthermore, the drawings are merely schematic illustrations of the present disclosure and are not necessarily drawn to scale. The same reference numerals in the drawings denote the same or similar parts, and thus their repetitive description will be omitted. Some of the block diagrams shown in the figures are functional entities and do not necessarily correspond to physically or logically separate entities. These functional entities may be implemented in the form of software, or in one or more hardware modules or integrated circuits, or in different networks and/or processor devices and/or microcontroller devices.

An exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure provides an electronic device for configuring an optical signal transmitting apparatus, the electronic device comprising at least a processor and a memory for storing executable instructions of the processor, the processor being configured to perform an optical signal transmitting process by the optical signal transmitting apparatus via execution of the executable instructions.

The structure of the electronic device is exemplarily described below by taking the mobile terminal 100 in fig. 1 as an example. It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the configuration of figure 1 can also be applied to fixed type devices, in addition to components specifically intended for mobile purposes.

As shown in fig. 1, the mobile terminal 100 may specifically include: a processor 110, an internal memory 121, an external memory interface 122, a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface 130, a charging management Module 140, a power management Module 141, a battery 142, an antenna 1, an antenna 2, a mobile communication Module 150, a wireless communication Module 160, an audio Module 170, a speaker 171, a receiver 172, a microphone 173, an earphone interface 174, a sensor Module 180, a display screen 190, a camera Module 191, an indicator 192, a motor 193, a key 194, and a SIM (Subscriber identity Module) card interface 195.

Processor 110 may include one or more processing units, such as: the Processor 110 may include an AP (Application Processor), a modem Processor, a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), an ISP (Image Signal Processor), a controller, an encoder, a decoder, a DSP (Digital Signal Processor), a baseband Processor, and/or an NPU (Neural-Network Processing Unit), etc. The encoder may encode (i.e., compress) image or video data; the decoder may decode (i.e., decompress) the codestream data of the image or video to restore the image or video data.

In some embodiments, processor 110 may include one or more interfaces through which connections are made to other components of mobile terminal 100.

The internal memory 121 may be used to store computer-executable program code, which includes instructions. The internal memory 121 may include a volatile memory, a nonvolatile memory, and the like. The processor 110 executes various functional applications of the mobile terminal 100 and data processing by executing instructions stored in the internal memory 121 and/or instructions stored in a memory provided in the processor.

The external memory interface 122 may be used to connect an external memory, such as a Micro SD card, for expanding the storage capability of the mobile terminal 100. The external memory communicates with the processor 110 through the external memory interface 122 to implement data storage functions, such as storing files of music, video, etc.

The USB interface 130 is an interface conforming to the USB standard specification, and may be used to connect a charger to charge the mobile terminal 100, or connect an earphone or other electronic devices.

The charging management module 140 is configured to receive charging input from a charger. While the charging management module 140 charges the battery 142, the power management module 141 may also supply power to the device; the power management module 141 may also monitor the status of the battery.

The wireless communication function of the mobile terminal 100 may be implemented by the antenna 1, the antenna 2, the mobile communication module 150, the wireless communication module 160, a modem processor, a baseband processor, and the like. The antennas 1 and 2 are used for transmitting and receiving electromagnetic wave signals. The mobile communication module 150 may provide a solution including 2G/3G/4G/5G wireless communication applied on the mobile terminal 100. The Wireless Communication module 160 may provide Wireless Communication solutions including WLAN (Wireless Local Area Networks, WLAN) (e.g., Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity, Wireless Fidelity)) Networks, BT (Bluetooth), GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System), FM (Frequency Modulation), NFC (Near Field Communication), IR (Infrared technology), and the like, which are applied to the mobile terminal 100.

The mobile terminal 100 may implement a display function through the GPU, the display screen 190, the AP, and the like, and display a user interface. The mobile terminal 100 may implement a photographing function through the ISP, the camera module 191, the encoder, the decoder, the GPU, the display screen 190, the AP, and the like, and may also implement an audio function through the audio module 170, the speaker 171, the receiver 172, the microphone 173, the earphone interface 174, the AP, and the like.

The sensor module 180 may include depth sensors 1801, pressure sensors 1802, gyroscope sensors 1803, air pressure sensors 1804, etc. to implement different sensing functions.

Indicator 192 may be an indicator light that may be used to indicate a state of charge, a change in charge, or a message, missed call, notification, etc. The motor 193 may generate a vibration cue, may also be used for touch vibration feedback, and the like. The keys 194 include a power-on key, a volume key, and the like.

The mobile terminal 100 may support one or more SIM card interfaces 195 for connecting SIM cards to enable telephony and data communications, among other functions.

The following describes in detail an optical signal transmitting apparatus according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, and the application scenarios of the present exemplary embodiment include, but are not limited to: the optical signal transmitting device is configured in the terminal equipment or the TOF sensor so as to transmit an optical signal through the optical signal transmitting device and perform ranging on an object in the surrounding environment or perform functions such as face recognition, laser radar and 3D perception according to the reflected optical signal.

Fig. 2 shows a schematic structural diagram of an optical signal transmitting apparatus in the present exemplary embodiment, and the apparatus 200 may include:

n transmitting units 210 including at least one variable connection transmitting unit, where N is a positive integer not less than 2.

Here, the emission unit refers to an element capable of Emitting an optical signal, which may be configured in a Laser transmitter, for example, a light Emitting element of a VCSEL (Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser), and each emission unit may include one or more light Emitting points, and a plurality of the light Emitting points may be connected in parallel or in series through a wire. Each light emitting point may emit a light signal into the surroundings, for example an infrared pulse signal or a laser signal, etc. The transmitting units may be connected by a wire, for example, the transmitting unit 1 may be connected with the transmitting unit 2, the transmitting unit 3 may be connected with the transmitting unit 4, or the transmitting unit 5, the transmitting unit 6 may be connected with the transmitting unit 7, and the like.

The N transmitting units may include at least one variable connection transmitting unit. In the present exemplary embodiment, the transmitting unit and the driving circuit are in a fixed connection relationship, for example, the transmitting unit 1 is fixedly connected to the driving circuit 1, and the transmitting unit 2 is fixedly connected to the driving circuit 2, so that the transmitting unit 1 and the transmitting unit 2 are the non-variable connection transmitting unit; the transmitting unit and the driving circuit may also be in a non-fixed connection relationship, for example, the transmitting unit 3 is connected with the driving circuit 3, or may be connected with the driving circuit 4, and the connection relationship between the transmitting unit 3 and the driving circuit 3 or the driving circuit 4 may be adjusted according to actual needs to implement connection states of different transmitting units and driving circuits, where the transmitting unit 3 is a variable connection transmitting unit.

The exemplary embodiment may set not less than 2 transmitting units to transmit optical signals to the surrounding environment, so that the optical signal receiving apparatus receives the optical signals reflected in the environment, and perform the calculation of the time of flight according to the reflected optical signals, thereby achieving the ranging.

The M driving circuits 220 can operate at different times, and M is a positive integer not less than 2 and not more than N.

Wherein each emission unit is connected with at most one driving circuit at any light emitting time, and when the driving circuit works, the emission unit connected with the driving circuit is driven to emit light signals.

The driving circuit is a circuit capable of controlling the emitting unit to emit the optical signal at different times, and may be a laser driving channel. The method mainly comprises the steps of amplifying an input digital signal and driving a laser to be rapidly turned off or turned on in a current or voltage mode, so that an emitting unit connected with a driving circuit can emit the light signal when the driving circuit is turned on, and stops emitting the light signal when the driving circuit is turned off, thereby realizing the control of the emitting unit. The present exemplary embodiment may include M driving circuits, the number of driving circuits may be less than or equal to the number of emission units, each emission unit may be connected with a different driving circuit, for example, 10 emission units may be connected with 10 driving circuits correspondingly without repetition; different emitter units may also be connected to the same driver circuit, e.g. 10 emitter units may be connected to 5 driver circuits, every two emitter units being connected to the same driver circuit, etc. Each driver circuit may operate at different times, thereby enabling a transmitting unit connected to different driver circuits to transmit optical signals to the surroundings at different times.

A switch 230 for switching the variable connection transmitting unit to be connected to different driving circuits.

Wherein, the switching piece can be used to change the connection relationship between the driving circuit and the emitting unit, so as to realize that the driving circuit can control different emitting units to emit light signals, for example, for the emitting unit 3 whose variable connection is controlled by the driving circuit 3, the connection state of the emitting unit 3 and the driving circuit 3 can be changed by the switching piece, and adjusted to connect the emitting unit 3 and the driving circuit 4, so that the driving circuit 4 can control the emitting unit 3 to emit light signals. The switching condition of the specific switching piece can be determined according to a specific application scene, for example, in an application scene of face recognition and an application scene of distance measurement of a certain object in a current shooting scene, the requirements of the required transmitting units are different, and the positions and the number of the transmitting units in the working state can be adjusted according to the switching piece, so that the power consumption is saved while the requirements are met.

In summary, in the exemplary embodiment, N transmitting units include at least one variable connection transmitting unit, where N is a positive integer not less than 2; m drive circuits, which can work at different time, wherein M is a positive integer not less than 2 and not more than N; a switching member for switching the variable connection transmitting unit to be connected to different driving circuits; wherein each emission unit is connected with at most one driving circuit at any light emitting time, and when the driving circuit works, the emission unit connected with the driving circuit is driven to emit light signals. On one hand, the present exemplary embodiment provides a new optical signal transmitting apparatus, which may include N transmitting units, where the transmitting units include a variable connection transmitting unit capable of being switched by a switching element to connect to different driving circuits, and in practical applications, the variable connection transmitting unit may be controlled to connect to different driving circuits according to specific scene requirements, so as to randomly control the variable connection transmitting unit to transmit optical signals at different times, and have strong pertinence and high efficiency in some specific application scenes, for example, in an auto-focusing scene, when only fewer transmitting units are required to transmit optical signals, a small number of variable transmitting units may be controlled to connect to corresponding driving circuits, so that detection of depth information and the like may be achieved; according to the embodiment, the driving circuit can be controlled to be connected with different variable connection transmitting units to transmit the optical signals according to different scene requirements, so that the problem of extra power consumption loss caused by invalid transmission of the optical signals by the transmitting units can be effectively solved, and hardware power consumption is greatly saved; on the other hand, the variable connection transmitting unit can be switched to be connected with different driving circuits, flexible arrangement is achieved, and therefore the problem that signals in space are interfered is solved.

In an exemplary embodiment, each of the emission units may include a plurality of light emission points, wherein the light emission points of the other emission units are disposed between at least two of the light emission points.

In order to ensure flexible adjustability of the light signal emitting array to obtain a random light emitting pattern meeting the requirements of a scene, in the present exemplary embodiment, light emitting points of other emitting units may be disposed between at least two light emitting points. Fig. 3 shows a schematic arrangement of light emitting points in different emission units, where an emission unit 310 may include eight light emitting points, which are light emitting

points

311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, and 318, an emission unit 320 may include four light emitting points, which are light emitting

points

321, 322, 323, and 324, where a light emitting point 321 of another emission unit 320 may be included between the light emitting point 311 and the light emitting point 318, a light emitting point 322 of another emission unit 320 may be included between the light emitting point 312 and the light emitting point 317, and so on. Fig. 4 shows a schematic diagram of an arrangement of light emitting points in another different emission unit, the emission unit 410 may include four light emitting points, which are light emitting

points

411, 412, 413, and 414, the emission unit 420 may include two light emitting points, which are light emitting

points

421 and 422, respectively, and the light emitting point 421 and the light emitting point 422 of another emission unit 421 may be included between the light emitting point 411 and the light emitting point 412. That is, in the present exemplary embodiment, the different emission units may be arranged randomly, and the light emission points of the other emission units may be arranged between the light emission points in the different emission units.

It should be noted that, in the exemplary embodiment, different emission units and light-emitting points may be distributed in a staggered manner, the light-emitting points in the same emission unit may be connected by a wire, the number of the emission units and the light-emitting points therein, and the arrangement of the different emission units and the light-emitting points are only schematically described, and the actual situation may be set individually according to the requirement, which is not specifically limited in this disclosure.

In an exemplary embodiment, each emission unit includes a plurality of light emitting strings arranged in parallel, each light emitting string including a plurality of light emitting points arranged in series.

The light-emitting strings may include a plurality of light-emitting points arranged in series, and the number of the light-emitting points in different light-emitting strings may be the same or different. Each emission unit may include a plurality of light emitting strings arranged in parallel, for example, two or three light emitting strings may be arranged in parallel, which is not particularly limited by the present disclosure. As shown in fig. 6, the emission unit 610 may include 2 light emitting strings, which are a light emitting string 611 and a light emitting string 612, respectively, and the light emitting strings 611 and light emitting points inside the light emitting string 612 may be connected in series by a wire, and the light emitting strings 611 and the light emitting strings 612 may be connected in parallel by a wire; the emission unit 620 may include 3 light emitting strings, which are the light emitting string 621, the light emitting string 622, and the light emitting string 623, and similarly, light emitting points inside the light emitting strings are connected in series by a wire, and the light emitting strings are connected in parallel by a wire.

In an exemplary embodiment, the light emitting point positions in each light emitting string are consecutive.

As shown in fig. 5, the positions of the light emitting points in each of the light emitting strings in the emitting unit 510 are continuous, and the positions of the light emitting points in each of the light emitting strings in the emitting unit 520 are also continuous. On the contrary, in fig. 4, if the light emitting points 411 to 414 in the emitting unit 410 are light emitting strings connected in series, the positions thereof are shown in a state of discontinuous positions due to the

light emitting points

421 and 422 spaced by other emitting units.

In an exemplary embodiment, N ═ aM, a is a positive integer not less than 2; each a transmitting units form a transmitting unit group, and N transmitting units form M transmitting unit groups; at any light emitting time, each driving circuit is connected with one emitting unit group.

In the present exemplary embodiment, different transmitting units may also be combined and combined into a transmitting unit group, where the number of transmitting units in the transmitting unit group may be the same, for example, two transmitting units are combined; or may be different, for example, two or three transmit units may be combined.

In particular, in the present exemplary embodiment, each a transmitting units may be configured to form a transmitting unit group, that is, all transmitting unit groups include a transmitting units with the same number. Then, each emitting unit group is connected with one driving circuit, so that each driving circuit can control one emitting unit group to emit light signals, namely, the number of the emitting unit groups is M, which is the same as that of the driving circuits. Taking a as an example, as shown in fig. 6, a plurality of emission units, namely,

emission units

610, 620, 630, 640, 650, 660, 670, 680 are shown, each emission unit is composed of two light-emitting strings connected in parallel, each light-emitting string contains four light-emitting points, in the present exemplary embodiment, the transmitting unit 610 and the transmitting unit 680 may form a transmitting unit group 1, the transmitting unit 620 and the transmitting unit 670 may form a transmitting unit group 2, the transmitting unit 630 and the transmitting unit 660 may form a transmitting unit group 3, the transmitting unit 640 and the transmitting unit 650 may form a transmitting unit group 4, further, the transmitting unit group 1 may be connected to the driving circuit 1, the transmitting unit group 2 may be connected to the driving circuit 2, the transmitting unit group 3 may be connected to the driving circuit 3, and the transmitting unit group 4 may be connected to the driving circuit 4.

In an exemplary embodiment, each process of emitting the light signal may include P light emitting periods, each light emitting period including M light emitting periods; the M drive circuits work in M light-emitting time periods in sequence to drive the M emission unit groups to emit light signals in sequence

That is, the present exemplary embodiment may control the driving circuits to operate at different times, and after each driving circuit is turned on once in sequence, it is regarded that one light emitting period is completed, and the continuous emission of the optical signal is performed by performing P light emitting periods. And when each driving circuit is started to work, the driving circuit corresponds to one light-emitting time period, and the M driving circuits correspond to the M light-emitting time periods.

Taking the combination of the emitting units shown in fig. 6 as an example, the driving circuits 1-4 can be sequentially operated at different times, the emitting units 1-4 emit light signals, and the sensor terminals are cooperatively used for receiving the light signals, so as to obtain the schematic diagram of the light-emitting dot matrix shown in fig. 7, where fig. 7(a) shows the lighting state of the emitting units when the driving circuit 1 is operated, fig. 7(b) shows the lighting state of the emitting units when the driving circuit 2 is operated, fig. 7(c) shows the lighting state of the emitting units when the driving circuit 3 is operated, and fig. 7(d) shows the lighting state of the emitting units when the driving circuit 4 is operated.

In an exemplary embodiment, the optical signal emitting element may further include an optical diffraction element.

In practical applications, a light-emitting pattern can be copied by 3 × 3 in space by using a DOE (Diffractive Optical Elements) element, so that when the single-channel operation is performed, the light is projected in space and returned to the object to be measured, and the light spots in the pattern irradiated on the sensor can be as shown in fig. 8, where (a) to (d) shown in fig. 8 correspond to the lighting states of the emission units in fig. 7(a) to (d), respectively.

It should be noted that fig. 6 to fig. 7 only schematically illustrate schematic diagrams of one kind of emission unit combination, and other emission unit combinations may be set according to actual needs, for example, the emission unit 610 and the emission unit 650 constitute an emission unit, and the connection manner of the emission unit combination and the driving circuit, for example, the emission unit combination 1 is connected to the driving circuit 4, and the like. The present disclosure is not particularly limited thereto.

In an exemplary embodiment, the switching member includes a single-pole multi-throw switch, one end of which is connected to the variable connection transmitting unit, and the other end of which is switchable to a different driving circuit.

That is, in the structural schematic diagram of the transmitting unit combination shown in fig. 6, the connection relationship between the transmitting unit combination and the driving circuit can be switched through a switching element, for example, one end of the single-pole multi-throw switch can be connected to the transmitting unit group 1, that is, two transmitting units included in the transmitting unit combination 1, the other end can be connected to the driving circuit 1 or the driving circuit 2, the current transmitting unit combination 1 is connected to the driving circuit 1, and when a switching requirement is received, the connection to the driving circuit 2 can be switched, so that the driving circuit 2 controls the transmission of the optical signal of the transmitting unit combination 1.

In an exemplary embodiment, the switching member randomly connects the variable connection transmitting unit to one driving circuit by random switching before each transmission of the optical signal.

The present exemplary embodiment may determine that the switching piece is switched to the driving circuit to which the variable connection transmitting unit needs to be connected, before transmitting the optical signal each time. For example, in a scene with low requirements on resolution and frame rate, for example, when focusing is assisted, only one driving circuit may be operated, or when a certain position in the scene is measured, the switching element is switched to one driving circuit to connect to some transmitting units corresponding to the position, a small number of transmitting units transmit optical signals, and reflected optical signals are received to perform simple distance measurement, and all transmitting units or driving circuits do not need to be operated, thereby achieving the effect of saving power consumption.

Exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure also provide an optical signal sensor, as shown in fig. 9, the optical signal sensor 900 may include:

the optical signal transmitting apparatus 200 described above;

an optical signal receiving device 910;

wherein, optical signal receiving arrangement includes:

n receiving units 911, corresponding to the N transmitting units in the optical signal transmitting apparatus 200, are used for the optical reflected signal reflected by the optical signal transmitting apparatus to the optical signal transmitted in the environment.

The receiving unit may include one or more receiving points, which may be pixels for receiving or processing the returned light reflection signal, and the number of receiving points may be different from or the same as the number of light emitting points in the emitting unit, which is not specifically limited in this disclosure.

In the present exemplary embodiment, the optical signal receiving device may be an SPAD (Single Photon Avalanche Diode) photosensitive sensor, which belongs to a graphic sensor, and the photosensitive region may be composed of a plurality of independent pixels. For measuring distance information, each pixel needs to transmit a signal to a specially designed TDC (Time to Digital converter) and a subsequent distance calculation Histogram (Histogram circuit), where the TDC and Histogram circuits are composed of hundreds of transistors, often occupy most of the area of the circuit, and have high power consumption. Therefore, several pixels can share one set of TDC and Histogram circuits in time.

In an exemplary embodiment, the N receiving units operate sequentially for N receiving periods such that each receiving unit receives the light reflection signal sequentially.

In other words, the respective pixel regions in the photosensitive region may be "rotated" to operate the photosensitive. Each pixel region is a receiving unit, and in the present exemplary embodiment, one receiving unit may include one or more pixels. Fig. 10 is a schematic diagram illustrating the operation of an optical signal sensor, where only a partial photosensitive area is schematically illustrated, and the photosensitive area 1010, the TDC circuit 1020, and the Histogram builder circuit 1030 of an optical signal receiving apparatus are illustrated, where the photosensitive area includes a plurality of pixels, where one or more pixels form a receiving unit, for example, the photosensitive area 1010 in fig. 10 includes receiving

units

1011, 1012, 1013, and 1014, each receiving unit can "rotate" to operate photosensitive, for example, the currently activated photosensitive pixel area is the receiving unit 1011, the activated light spot is projected as a solid light spot such as 1015, and the non-activated photosensitive pixel area is a dotted light spot such as the receiving

units

1012, 1013, and 1014, in this exemplary embodiment, the operating state of the receiving unit where each pixel is located can be controlled by setting a gating switch in the photosensitive chip, and after each pixel receives a light reflection signal, and (4) processing by a TDC circuit and a Histogram circuit to obtain corresponding distance information.

In summary, in the present exemplary embodiment, the optical signal sensor includes an optical signal emitting device and an optical signal receiving device; wherein, optical signal receiving arrangement includes: and the N receiving units correspond to the N transmitting units in the optical signal transmitting device and are used for receiving optical reflection signals reflected by the optical signal transmitted by the optical signal transmitting device to the environment. On one hand, when the optical signal transmitting device is adopted in the exemplary embodiment, since the variable connection transmitting unit is included, the variable connection transmitting unit can be controlled to be connected to different driving circuits according to specific scene requirements, and the variable connection transmitting unit is randomly controlled to transmit optical signals at different times, so that random light spots are formed in spatial projection; on the other hand, the optical signal receiving apparatus employed in the present exemplary embodiment may include a receiving unit corresponding to the transmitting unit, and may be capable of receiving the optical reflection signal quickly and accurately so as to perform effective processing thereon; on the other hand, by adopting the optical signal sensor of the optical signal transmitting device and the optical signal receiving device, the working states of the receiving unit and the transmitting unit are controllable, so that the power consumption of hardware is greatly saved.

Exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure also disclose an optical signal processing system, as shown in fig. 11, the system 1100 may include: an optical signal transmitting terminal 1110 and an optical signal receiving terminal 1120;

the optical signal emitting end may include a laser driving chip 1111, a laser emitting chip 1112, a collimated light lens group 1113, a DOE optical diffraction element 1114, and an outgoing pulsed laser 1115;

the optical signal receiving end may include a return pulse laser 1121, a receiving end lens group 1122, an optical filter 1123, an optical signal receiving device 1124, and an I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit) bus chip 1125.

The laser emitting chip may be a VCSEL vertical-cavity surface laser emitting chip, and the laser emitting chip and the laser driving chip are in a relationship of driving and driving to jointly form the optical signal emitting device, and the arrangement of the emitting units in the specific VCSEL is similar to the content described above with respect to the emitting units, which is not repeated herein.

The DOE optical diffraction element described above may be used to replicate a VCSEL pattern, for example, the pattern shown in fig. 8 is determined based on fig. 7. In general, the greater the number of copies, the greater the energy loss. Therefore, care should be taken to balance the number of copies and the physical size of the VCSEL. It is generally recommended that the DOE be designed in 3 x 3 replication, i.e. 3 copies in each of the x (horizontal) and y (vertical) directions, to obtain 9 uniformly arranged VCSEL patterns on the final plane. Of course, the present disclosure is not limited to the above embodiments, and the present disclosure may be extended to 3 × 5, 5 × 3, 5 × 5, and so on.

In addition, the present system may be applied to a TOF sensor, and the present exemplary embodiment may employ a VCSEL having an emission wavelength of 940nm as a light source, considering that indoor and outdoor light sources generally do not have 940nm (nanometers), while an IToF (Indirect TOF) sensor still maintains a high quantum detection efficiency for 940 nm. In addition, lasers with other wavelengths, such as 845nm, 1350nm, etc., may also be used, which is not specifically limited by the present disclosure.

When a TOF sensor is used, its physical resolution may be 240 × 180, 320 × 240, 640 × 480, etc. But the physical resolution of the chip (i.e., the maximum high-resolution intensity map that can be output) is generally no less than the resolution of the final output high-resolution dense map.

It should be noted that, in addition to the random arrangement of different emitting units in the optical signal emitting device, a plurality of driving circuits may also be randomly programmed to implement a randomly arranged light emitting dot matrix, for example, a VCSEL may be divided into two regions, electrodes may be respectively arranged, as shown in fig. 12, which shows a schematic diagram of random light spot distribution, and the electrodes 1210 of the driving circuit 1 and the electrodes 1220 of the driving circuit 2 are arranged on two sides of a plurality of light emitting points and respectively connected to a plurality of emitting units.

The program product may employ any combination of one or more readable media. The readable medium may be a readable signal medium or a readable storage medium. A readable storage medium may be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or any combination of the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the readable storage medium include: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable disk, a hard disk, a random access memory, a Read Only Memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read only memory (EPROM or flash memory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing.

A computer readable signal medium may include a propagated data signal with readable program code embodied therein, for example, in baseband or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated data signal may take many forms, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic, optical, or any suitable combination thereof. A readable signal medium may also be any readable medium that is not a readable storage medium and that can communicate, propagate, or transport a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.

Program code embodied on a readable medium may be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, etc., or any suitable combination of the foregoing.

Program code for carrying out operations for the present disclosure may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, C + + or the like and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the "C" programming language or similar programming languages. The program code may execute entirely on the user's computing device, partly on the user's device, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computing device and partly on a remote computing device, or entirely on the remote computing device or server. In the case of a remote computing device, the remote computing device may be connected to the user computing device through any kind of network, including a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN), or may be connected to an external computing device (e.g., through the internet using an internet service provider).

As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, aspects of the present disclosure may be embodied as a system, method or program product. Accordingly, various aspects of the present disclosure may be embodied in the form of: an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, microcode, etc.) or an embodiment combining hardware and software aspects that may all generally be referred to herein as a "circuit," module "or" system. Other embodiments of the disclosure will be apparent to those skilled in the art from consideration of the specification and practice of the disclosure disclosed herein. This disclosure is intended to cover any variations, uses, or adaptations of the disclosure following, in general, the principles of the disclosure and including such departures from the present disclosure as come within known or customary practice within the art to which the disclosure pertains. It is intended that the specification and examples be considered as exemplary only, with a true scope and spirit of the disclosure being indicated by the following claims.

It will be understood that the present disclosure is not limited to the precise arrangements described above and shown in the drawings and that various modifications and changes may be made without departing from the scope thereof. The scope of the present disclosure is to be limited only by the following claims.

Claims

1. An optical signal transmitting apparatus, comprising:

n transmitting units, wherein at least one variable connection transmitting unit is included, and N is a positive integer not less than 2;

m drive circuits, which can work at different time, wherein M is a positive integer not less than 2 and not more than N;

a switching member for switching the variable connection transmitting unit to be connected to a different driving circuit;

wherein each emission unit is connected with at most one driving circuit at any light-emitting time, and when the driving circuit works, the emission unit connected with the driving circuit is driven to emit light signals.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein each emission unit comprises a plurality of light emission points, and wherein at least two of the light emission points have the light emission points of the other emission units disposed therebetween.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein each emission unit comprises a plurality of light emitting strings arranged in parallel, each light emitting string comprising a plurality of light emitting points arranged in series.

4. The apparatus of claim 3, wherein the light emitting point locations in each light emitting string are consecutive.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein N ═ aM, a is a positive integer no less than 2; each a transmitting units form a transmitting unit group, and the N transmitting units form M transmitting unit groups; at any light emitting time, each driving circuit is connected with one emitting unit group.

6. The apparatus of claim 5, wherein each emission of the optical signal comprises P emission periods, each emission period comprising M emission periods; the M driving circuits work in the M light-emitting time periods in sequence to drive the M transmitting unit groups to transmit light signals in sequence.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the switching member comprises a single-pole multi-throw switch, one end of which is connected to the variable connection transmitting unit and the other end of which is switchable to a different driving circuit.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the switching member randomly connects the variable connection transmitting unit to one driving circuit by random switching before each transmission of the optical signal.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising:

an optical diffraction element for modulating the optical signal emitted by the emission unit into a specific pattern.

10. An optical signal sensor, comprising:

the optical signal transmitting device according to claim 1;

an optical signal receiving device;

wherein the optical signal receiving apparatus includes:

and the N receiving units correspond to the N transmitting units in the optical signal transmitting device and are used for receiving optical reflection signals reflected by the optical signal transmitted to the environment by the optical signal transmitting device.

11. The optical signal sensor as claimed in claim 10, wherein the N receiving units are sequentially operated for N receiving periods such that each receiving unit sequentially receives the optical reflection signal.

12. An electronic device, comprising the optical signal transmitting apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 9 and the optical signal sensor according to 10-11.