RETRIEVAL OF THE BACKSCATTER CROSS-SECTION IN FULL-WAVEFORM LIDAR DATA USING B-SPLINES

摘要

Full-waveform lidar systems transmit short laser pulses towards the Earth's surface and record the complete backscattered echo. This technique does not only allow for the three-dimensional reconstruction of the terrain, natural and man-made objects, but also for the derivation of (geo-)physical parameters such as the (differential) backscatter cross-section. To retrieve this quantity, deconvolution is necessary which is an ill-posed problem. This paper presents a novel technique for the computation of the backscatter cross-section using B-splines which allow for a well-posed linear approach for deconvolution without regularization. Moreover, it is independent on symmetry of the temporal shapes of the emitted laser pulse and the recorded echo waveform, respectively. In this study, the algorithm for deconvolution is described in detail and validated by both synthetic and real full-waveform lidar data.