TOPOGRAPHIC AND DISTANCE EFFECTS IN LASER SCANNER INTENSITY CORRECTION

The effect of incidence angle on the intensity of laser backscatter has been studied in photonics and optics, but the applications of these results to remote sensing of natural land targets are limited, as well as the availability of experimental validation data for airborne and terrestrial laser scanning, where the incidence angle correction using the Lambertian scattering law is common. We have investigated the role of topographic (incidence angle) and distance effects in the radiometric calibration of monostatic terrestrial and airborne laser scanner data. Our results show that the Lambertian (cosine) correction is practically valid at incidence angles up to 20o, whereas at greater angles of incidence, the accuracy of data is still very limited to estimate the performance of any correction method. We also discuss the mixed effects of distance and target reflectance on terrestrial laser scanner intensity calibration, for which the number of applications is constantly increasing. As there are differences in the intensity detectors of different instruments, it is important that the effects of distance and target reflectance are well defined before using any terrestrial laser scanner in intensity measurement. * Corresponding author.

[1]  B. Hapke.  Theory of reflectance and emittance spectroscopy , 1993 .

[2]  J. Dainty,et al.  Experimental light-scattering measurements from large-scale composite randomly rough surfaces. , 2002, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision.

[3]  Uwe Stilla,et al.  Estimation and measurement of backscattered signals from pulsed laser radar , 2003, SPIE Remote Sensing.

[4]  W. Wagner,et al.  Gaussian decomposition and calibration of a novel small-footprint full-waveform digitising airborne laser scanner , 2006 .

[5]  P. Sterzai,et al.  Radiometric correction in laser scanning , 2006 .

[6]  Juha Hyyppä,et al.  Calibration of the optech ALTM-3100 laser scanner intensity data using brightness targets , 2006 .

[7]  C. Hopkinson.  The influence of flying altitude, beam divergence, and pulse repetition frequency on laser pulse return intensity and canopy frequency distribution , 2007 .

[8]  N. Pfeifer,et al.  Correction of laser scanning intensity data: Data and model-driven approaches , 2007 .

[9]  Jong-Suk Yoon,et al.  Land Cover Characteristics of Airborne LiDAR Intensity Data: A Case Study , 2008, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters.

[10]  Alexander Prokop,et al.  Assessing the applicability of terrestrial laser scanning for spatial snow depth measurements , 2008 .

[11]  J. Hyyppä,et al.  Radiometric Calibration of Full-waveform Small-footprint Airborne Laser Scanners , 2008 .

[12]  Bernhard Höfle,et al.  Calibration of full-waveform airborne laser scanning data for object classification , 2008, SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing.

[13]  Antero Kukko,et al.  Effect of incidence angle on laser scanner intensity and surface data. , 2008, Applied optics.

[14]  Juha Hyyppä,et al.  Retrieval Algorithms for Road Surface Modelling Using Laser-Based Mobile Mapping , 2008, Sensors.

[15]  Ants Vain,et al.  Use of Naturally Available Reference Targets to Calibrate Airborne Laser Scanning Intensity Data , 2009, Sensors.

[16]  Carlo Atzeni,et al.  Using a Ground-Based SAR Interferometer and a Terrestrial Laser Scanner to Monitor a Snow-Covered Slope: Results From an Experimental Data Collection in Tyrol (Austria) , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[17]  Harri Kaartinen,et al.  Remote Sensing Radiometric Calibration of Terrestrial Laser Scanners with External Reference Targets , 2022 .

[18]  Juha Hyyppä,et al.  Radiometric Calibration of LIDAR Intensity With Commercially Available Reference Targets , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.