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Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)

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Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)

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LiDAR is an active remote sensing technique that is similar to RADAR but, instead of using radio waves as a radiation source, it uses laser pulses. In this technique, a laser source emits pulses that are directed towards the target of interest, such as a terrain landscape. The pulses encounter the terrain and a portion of the laser energy is reflected back to a sensor located near the source. By measuring the round-trip travel time of the emitted laser pulses, the LiDAR system can determine the distance between the sensor and the mapped terrain. LiDAR can generate a dense, three-dimensional (3D), geo-referenced point cloud, i.e., a set of data points in space, for the reflective terrain landscape when combined with a Global Positioning System (GPS) and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). Compared to traditional photogrammetric approaches, LiDAR is less sensitive to the current weather, time of the year, or time of the day during which data is collected.

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