A high success rate full-waveform lidar echo decomposition method

A full-waveform Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) echo decomposition method is proposed in this paper. In this method, the peak points are used to detect the separated echo components, while the inflection points are combined with corresponding peak points to detect the overlapping echo components. The detected echo components are then sorted according to their energies in a descending order. The sorted echo components are one by one added into the decomposition model according to their orders. For each addition, the parameters of all echo components already added into the decomposition model are iteratively renewed. After renewing, the amplitudes and full width at half maximums of the echo components are compared with pre-set thresholds to determine and remove the false echo components. Both simulation and experiment were carried out to evaluate the proposed method. In simulation, 4000 full-waveform echoes with different numbers and parameters of echo components were generated and decomposed using the proposed and three other commonly used methods. Results show that the proposed method is of the highest success rate, 91.43%. In experiment, 9549 Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) echoes for Shennongjia forest district in south China were employed as test echoes. The test echoes were first decomposed using the four methods and the decomposition results were also compared with those provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Comparison results show that the determination coefficient (R-2) of the proposed method is of the largest mean, 0.6838, and the smallest standard deviation, 0.3588, and the distribution of the number of the echo components decomposed from the GLAS echoes is the most satisfied with the situation of full-waveform echoes from the forest area, implying that the superposition of the echo components decomposed from a full-waveform echo by using the proposed method can best approximate the full-waveform echo.