[Animats]

Fourth power of the distance, actually. That's the radar equation. You have inverse-square losses going out, as the beam expands with distance. Then you have inverse-square losses coming back when the target is much smaller than the beam. That's the problem flash LIDARs face. It can be overcome with enough laser power out to 20-30 meters.

That's where the beam diameter at the target is much larger than the target, as for aircraft. With a small scanning dot from a LIDAR and a nice big target like a car, almost all the power hits the target, but you still have inverse square losses coming back.

[MezzoDelCammin]

true. My original was just a quick jote on a phone sipping a coffee on Sunday. I admit I simply didn't want to go into the whole "square FOV for the sensor vs. one detector / diode and that combined with the time of flight loss over distance", so I just used "exponential" to mean "it loses power pretty quickly". Apologies for the sloppiness on my part.

Second part of the comment I omitted is was what You mentioned in the beginning. Those 20-30 meters of practical range is why we keep seeing small LIDAR sensors on things like iPhones / iPads (though there I believe the range is even a bit shorter due to the size / power constraints), but not really much beyond that.

For practical demo of what's currently available at the high end of solid state LIDAR (albeit at 40k+ USD), I'd suggest looking at Leica and their BLK2GO PULSE (solid state) vs the rest of the BLK line (rotating laser spot).