ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
Publications Copernicus
Download
Citation
Articles | Volume I-4
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsannals-I-4-263-2012
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsannals-I-4-263-2012
20 Jul 2012
 | 20 Jul 2012

AUTOMATED MOUNTING BIAS CALIBRATION FOR AIRBORNE LIDAR SYSTEM

J. Zhang, W. Jiang, and S. Jiang

Keywords: LIDAR, calibration, mounting bias, bore-sight angle, lever-arm offset, Virtual Corresponding Point Model

Abstract. Mounting bias is the major error source of Airborne LIDAR system. In this paper, an automated calibration method for estimating LIDAR system mounting parameters is introduced. LIDAR direct geo-referencing model is used to calculate systematic errors. Due to LIDAR footprints discretely sampled, the real corresponding laser points are hardly existence among different strips. The traditional corresponding point methodology does not seem to apply to LIDAR strip registration. We proposed a Virtual Corresponding Point Model to resolve the corresponding problem among discrete laser points. Each VCPM contains a corresponding point and three real laser footprints. Two rules are defined to calculate tie point coordinate from real laser footprints. The Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is used to extract corresponding points in LIDAR strips, and the automatic flow of LIDAR system calibration based on VCPM is detailed described. The practical examples illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed calibration method.