Cover Story：Ren Y, Luo Y H, Xu S X, et al. A comparative study of time of flight extraction methods in non-line-of-sight location[J]. Opto-Electron Eng, 2021, 48(1): 200124 

Non-line-of-sight location is an active detection technology which is used to detect the position of objects out of sight by extracting the time of flight. It is a research hotspot in recent years. In order to study the performance differences of mean filter, median filter and Gaussian filter in extracting time of flight, firstly, the energy changing model of photon flight model is optimized by photometry, and then the parameters of the three filtering methods are optimized and analyzed. After that, the adaptability of these three extraction methods to the maximum value judgment method and probability threshold weighted judgment method is analyzed. Finally, the accuracy and stability of these three time extraction algorithms are compared by using the positions of devices and invisible object as variables. The simulation results show that the median filter is suitable for a narrow environment and it has the high accuracy in positioning; the locations with Gaussian filter have good positioning stability and there is a wider selection range of filtering parameters when the signal is processed with Gaussian filter.