Airborne Scanning

Improvements in DTM by using full-waveform airborne laser scanning data
RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems GmbH, Austria 15.11.2007

Compared to laser radar systems based on the conventional discrete echo approach, direct detection laser radar systems with echo signal digitization and subsequent full-waveform analysis like the RIEGL LMS-Q560 provide valuable additional information on the target’s properties. This additional information can be used in the course of the mandatory processing task of classifying the measurement data into ground returns and non-ground returns. Classification is a prerequisite for generating high-quality digital terrain models (DTMs) based on airborne laser scanning data. We present field data to demonstrate the superiority of full-waveform data over conventional laser data with respect to DTM generation.