• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.44 no.4 s.316
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• pp.28-35
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• 2007

Airbone laser altimeters have been utilized for 3D topographic mapping of the earth, moon, and planets with high resolution and accuracy, which is a rapidly growing remote sensing technique that measures the round-trip time emitted laser pulse to determine the topography. The traveling time from the laser scanner to the Earth's surface and back is directly related to the distance of the sensor to the ground. When there are several objects within the travel path of the laser pulse, the reflected laser pluses are distorted by surface variation within the footprint, generating multiple echoes because each target transforms the emitted pulse. The shapes of the received waveforms also contain important information about surface roughness, slope and reflectivity. Waveform processing algorithms parameterize and model the return signal resulting from the interaction of the transmitted laser pulse with the surface. Each of the multiple targets within the footprint can be identified. Assuming each response is gaussian, returns are modeled as a mixture gaussian distribution. Then, the parameters of the model are estimated by LMS Method or EM algorithm However, each response actually shows the skewness in the right side with the slowly decaying tail. For the application to require more accurate analysis, the tail information is to be quantified by an approach to decompose the tail. One method to handle with this problem is proposed in this study.