RF assisted Optical Range Finding

Optical range finding suffers from several problems during field use: optical noise, clutter and random scatter can degrade returned signal and make it difficult to make a determination. RF techniques, on the other hand, are less accurate than optical techniques can be but suffer less from environmental conditions. How can we combine these 2 techniques to improve range finding? That was the problem our client faced. By understanding the problem and modeling it accurately, we were able to develop a Kalman filter based technique that integrated the 2 data streams and permitted the system to continue to operate at the noise level of at least the lowest noise subsystem. Additionally, particular noise patterns were detected and so could be safely removed from each of the sensor subsystems.