I know how Lighthouse works (I wrote the article). :) Like I said, " Like many IR systems, the LEDs and lasers are actually modulated (Alan said, "on the order of MHz"). This is useful for a few reasons: (1) to distinguish the desired light signals from other IR interferers such as the sun; and (2) to permit multiple transmitters with different modulation frequencies."
I was responding to the GP: "You would be able to get some distance information via the modulation on the signal." I was telling GP, (1) how Lighthouse cannot use time of flight, and (2) how time of flight works for laser rangefinders, where modulation is actually used for ToF measurements.
Ah yes you could use time of flight even in the MHz range, where the wavelength of light is 300 meters if you have an accurate enough receiver, but that should be a problem.
I think the precision should be on the order of ~ (A/D relative precision) * (wavelength), so for mm accuracy you need an A/D converted with more then 10^(-9) precision (that is, a >30 bit D/A), which I don't think is cheap (but doable perhaps?). The other problem is this conflicts greatly with multipath and other kinds of interference.
I was responding to the GP: "You would be able to get some distance information via the modulation on the signal." I was telling GP, (1) how Lighthouse cannot use time of flight, and (2) how time of flight works for laser rangefinders, where modulation is actually used for ToF measurements.