Estimating field-of-view loss in bathymetric lidar: application to large-scale simulations

Abstract

When designing a bathymetric lidar, it is important to study simulated waveforms for various combinations of system and environmental parameters. To predict a system's ranging accuracy, it is often necessary to analyze thousands of waveforms. In these large-scale simulations, estimating field-of-view loss is a challenge because the calculation is complex and computationally intensive. This paper describes a new procedure for quickly approximating this loss, and illustrates how it can be used to efficiently predict ranging accuracy.

Simulation for Propagation Behavior of a Gaussian Beam in Water Medium by Monte Carlo Method

“…a photomultiplier tube. In this case, the field-of-view loss factor induced by the broad distribution of scattered photons should be appropriately estimated for the optimized LIDAR performance [15,17]. The width of the fraction of the photons in the scattered distribution as a function of the single scattering albedo (ω0) at z = zR is shown in Fig.…”

“…This is true even if the fine structure of the Gaussian beam is distorted when taking refractive index fluctuations of the coastal water as well as the random evolution of the ocean surface into account. These factors are not considered in the current calculation [13,17]. Thus any laser source with high beam quality is not required because the initial beam quality diminishes during the propagation after a distance, e.g.…”

Focus on institutional research at Georgia Tech: editorial

“…The advancements in optical system measurements is a common theme among the papers. Measurements include ultra-short laser pulses, atmospheric aerosols, and field of view losses in bathymetric lidar [2][3][4][5][6][7][8].…”