  In order to enhance LIDAR performance metrics such as target detection
sensitivity, noise resilience and ranging accuracy, we exploit the strong
temporal correlation within the photon pairs generated in continuous-wave
pumped semiconductor waveguides. The enhancement attained through the use of
such non-classical sources is measured and compared to a corresponding target
detection scheme based on simple photon-counting detection. The performances of
both schemes are quantified by the estimation uncertainty and Fisher
information of the probe photon transmission, which is a widely adopted sensing
figure of merit. The target detection experiments are conducted with high probe
channel loss (\(\simeq 1-5\times10^{-5}\)) and formidable environment noise up
to 36 dB stronger than the detected probe power of \(1.64\times 10^{-5}\) pW.
The experimental result shows significant advantages offered by the enhanced
scheme with up to 26.3 dB higher performance in terms of estimation
uncertainty, which is equivalent to a reduction of target detection time by a
factor of 430 or 146 (21.6 dB) times more resilience to noise. We also
experimentally demonstrated ranging with these non-classical photon pairs
generated with continuous-wave pump in the presence of strong noise and loss,
achieving \(\approx\)5 cm distance resolution that is limited by the temporal
resolution of the detectors.
