We’re excited to share that SenseICs Corporation has been awarded another NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration contract to develop AltiZoom-256, our next-generation LiDAR receiver technology for UAV flight testing and precision terrain sensing! 🛩️ 🛰️
AltiZoom-256 is a low-SWaP-C, scalable LiDAR receiver ASIC architecture designed to support dense Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) arrays for high-precision airborne sensing. The technology is being developed for applications including UAV altimetry, terrain mapping, hazard detection, terrain-relative navigation, and precision landing-zone assessment.
A key part of the technology is the integration of Constant Fraction Discriminator (CFD) timing, developed at The Ohio State University and licensed by SenseICs, to reduce amplitude-dependent timing errors and improve ranging consistency across changing terrain and environmental conditions.
This project also builds upon our existing NASA ACT-22 DARSoC LiDAR technology while advancing a new architecture focused specifically on dense SiPM-array acquisition, high-precision terrain measurements, and compact airborne deployment.
We’re proud to continue working with NASA to advance next-generation radiation-hardened sensing technologies that can support safer, smarter, and more autonomous airborne systems.