Performance Assessment of High Resolution Airborne Full Waveform LiDAR for Shallow River Bathymetry

We evaluate the performance of full waveform LiDAR decomposition algorithms with a high-resolution single band airborne LiDAR bathymetry system in shallow rivers. A continuous wavelet transformation (CWT) is proposed and applied in two fluvial environments, and the results are compared to existing echo retrieval methods. LiDAR water depths are also compared to independent field measurements. In both clear and turbid water, the CWT algorithm outperforms the other methods if only green LiDAR observations are available. However, both the definition of the water surface, and the turbidity of the water significantly influence the performance of the LiDAR bathymetry observations. The results suggest that there is no single best full waveform processing algorithm for all bathymetric situations. Overall, the optimal processing strategies resulted in a determination of water depths with a 6 cm mean at 14 cm standard deviation for clear water, and a 16 cm mean and 27 cm standard deviation in more turbid water.