Calibration of the laser pointing bias of the GaoFen-7 satellite based on simulation waveform matching

The two-beam GaoFen-7 (GF-7) laser altimeter is China's first formal spaceborne laser altimeter system for Earth observations. In this article, a calibration method based on simulation waveform matching is proposed to correct the laser pointing error now that the satellite is in orbit. In the method, the optimal position of the laser footprint is searched using simulated and actual waveforms. Then, the laser pointing is calibrated based on the laser footprint optimal position. In this paper, after calibration of the GF-7 laser pointing, infrared detectors are used to capture laser footprints for accuracy verification. The results show that the GF-7 laser pointing accuracy is greatly improved by the method; the laser pointing accuracy of beam 1 is approximately 5.4 arcsec, and that of beam 2 is approximately 5.7 arcsec. Subsequently, two laser footprints are selected for GF-7 laser calibration in the Helan Mountains, China, and AW3D30 digital surface model (DSM) and GPS/RTK data are used to verify the laser elevation measurement accuracy (EMA). The results show that the EMA of the GF-7 laser is significantly improved after calibration. Over flat terrain, the EMA of the GF-7 laser is improved by 10 times, from 3.74 +/- 0.55 m to 0.35 +/- 0.50 m, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed method. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement