Investigations on the non-ambiguity range extension of dual-comb ranging by repetition range variation

Absolute distance measurement based on the dual-comb system is a promising tool for the large-scale measurement in the industrial field. There are two combs with slightly different repetition rates in the dual-comb system, and the distance information could be obtained by the asynchronous optical sampling (ASOPS). However, the measured range could be limited within the pulse-to-pulse interval range by the non-ambiguity range (NAR) without the extension. This paper proposes a method to extend the unambiguous range by changing the repetition range. Firstly, the method of dual-comb ranging and the principle of extending the non-ambiguity range were introduced. Secondly, the two implementations of changing single repetition frequency and switching repetition frequency were compared through simulation. Then, according to the simulated results, the effective conditions and theoretical maximum range of extended ranging were clarified. Finally, a long absolute distance measurement was designed and the ranging results of switching repetition frequency were compared with the conventional incremental interferometer, which proves that this method is reliable for extending the non-ambiguous range.