Recovery of systematic biases in laser altimetry data using natural surfaces

The accuracy of lidar systems and the removal of systematic errors have received growing attention in recent years. The level of accuracy and the additional processing that is needed for making the raw data ready to use are affected directly by the svstematic errors in the laser data. It is evident that calibration of the lidar system, both laboratory and in-flight, are mandatory to alleviate these deficiencies. This paper presents an error recovery model that is based on modeling the system errors and on defining adequate control information. The association of the observations and control information, and configurations that enhance the reliability of the recovered parameters, are also studied here in detail. The application of the model is demonstrated on two of the main error sources in the system, the mounting, and the range bias.