Impact analysis of random measurement errors on airborne laser scanning accuracy

In this paper, the impacts of the random measurement errors on airborne laser scanning (ALS) accuracy were studied. Firstly, the transformation formulas from measurement parameters to the coordinates of laser footprints were derived and the factors affecting ALS accuracy were analyzed. According to the actual characteristics of these factors, 2000 sets of experimental data of the random measurement errors were simulated and the errors of three-dimensional (3D) coordinates of the laser footprints were calculated. Then, the simulated experimental error data were processed by using the linear least squares regression method to get the standardized regression coefficients. According to the obtained standardized regression coefficients, the impacts of various random measurement errors on the 3D coordinate errors were evaluated quantitatively, and the variation of the impacts with increasing flight height was studied. Analysis results provide an important basis for error budget of ALS system and improvement of ALS accuracy.