Airborne Scanning

LITEMAPPER-5600
Waveform-Digitizing Lidar Terrain and Vegetation Mapping System 02.10.2007

During the last decade, airborne LIDAR mapping has gained general acceptance as an accurate and rapid method for three-dimensional surveying of the Earth’s surface. Conventional systems output the three-dimensional coordinates of the surface locations hit by the laser pulse (“discrete ranges”). Most systems are able to distinguish two returns from multiple targets touched by a single laser pulse, some systems provide up to four returns.The user has no way of knowing how the electronics of his LIDAR system actually determine the location of the returns they report, nor of any distortions of the pulse shape that receiver electronics or surface structures may have imposed upon the pulse echo.The solution is to digitally sample and store the entire echo waveform of reflected laser pulses. The advent of commercial waveform-digitizing LIDAR mapping systems like the LiteMapper-5600 finally gives the user the possibility to himself define the way “range” is calculated in post-processing – potentially making the ranging process more robust and improving accuracy.