High Accuracy Reconstruction of Airborne Streak Tube Imaging LiDAR Using Particle Swarm Optimization

Abstract

Airborne streak tube imaging LiDAR (STIL) consists of several different data-generating subsystems and introduces system errors each time it is installed on an aircraft. These errors change with each installation, which makes the parametric calibration of the LiDAR meaningless. In this study, we propose a high-precision reconstruction method for point clouds that can be used without calibrating the system parameters. In essence, after each remote sensing measurement, a self-checking process is performed with experimental data to replace the fixed system parameters. In this process, the splicing error of the same region measured under different conditions is used as a criterion to optimize the reconstruction parameters via a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. For a detection distance of 3000 m, the elevation error of the point cloud reconstruction reaches more than 1 m if the placement parameters are not optimized; after optimization, the elevation error can be controlled within 0.3 m.