Toward aerosols LiDAR scattering plots clustering and analysis

A compact light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system is used for the purpose of aerosols profile measurements by identifying the aerosol scattering ratio as function of the altitude. These color plots can be treated as images with high intensities referring to high scattering ratios and low intensities referring to low scattering ratios. In this paper, we explore the clustering of these plots into homogeneous regions via unsupervised clustering techniques such as fuzzy techniques and evaluate their performance on this type of data. We introduce a new clustering technique to work efficiently on this type of images and compare its results against the regular techniques. By capturing different aerosols profiles at different times, we are able to describe the aerosol existence structure in the area of our interest.