Land-cover classification of multispectral LiDAR data using CNN with optimized hyper-parameters

Multispectral LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) is characterized of the completeness and consistency of its spectrum and spatial geometric data, which provides a new data source for land-cover classification. In recent years, the convolutional neural network (CNN), compared with traditional machine learning methods, has made a series of breakthroughs in image classification, object detection, and image semantic segmentation due to its stronger feature learning and feature expression abilities. However, traditional CNN models suffer from some issues, such as a large number of layers, leading to higher computational cost. To address this problem, we propose a CNN-based multi-spectral LiDAR land-cover classification framework and analyze its optimal parameters to improve classification accuracy. This framework starts with the preprocessing of multi-spectral 3D LiDAR data into 2D images. Next, a CNN model is constructed with seven fundamental functional layers, and its hyper-parameters are comprehensively discussed and optimized. The constructed CNN model with the optimized hyper-parameters was tested on the Titan multi-spectral LiDAR data, which include three wavelengths of 532 nm, 1064 nm, and 1550 nm. Extensive experiments demonstrated that the constructed CNN with the optimized hyper-parameters is feasible for multi-spectral LiDAR land-cover classification tasks. Compared with the classical CNN models (i.e., AlexNet, VGG16 and ResNet50) and our previous studies, our constructed CNN model with the optimized hyper-parameters is superior in computational performance and classification accuracies.