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Airborne Scanning

A.Ullrich, M.Pfennigbauer, P. Rieger: How to read your LiDAR spec- a comparison of single-laser-output and multi-laser-output LiDAR instruments 01.02.2013

Today’s LIDAR marketplace offers a variety of airborne laser scanning (ALS) instruments with specification sheets that are often hard to read and apply in real-world applications. The purpose of an ALS system is to capture the topography of the ground in an effective way by means of a large number of measured coordinates. Often the metrics of the specsheets are given are in terms of scanning rates and maximum operating altitudes, but these alone do not provide insight into the real productivity and quality of data produced by each instrument. To alleviate this complexity, simple metrics for examining productivity and data quality are introduced. These metrics make it possible to more readily compare different ALS instruments.

Read this paper to learn more about:

How fast can LIDAR data be acquired while ensuring a specific point spacing on the ground?
How does height variation of terrain impact acquisition speed?
Can an instrument with a lower maximum measurement speed outperform instruments with higher measurement speeds with respect to total acquisition time?