The Independent Variable Interpolation Technique for Nonuniformly Sampled Shallow-Angle Lidar Data

Abstract

Abstract Shallow-angle lidar offers an attractive approach to acquiring spatial profiles of sea waves, which are of value in both oceanographic research and practical engineering applications, such as in the control of wave energy capture devices and for a variety of vessel operations. However, the wave elevation values produced by shallow-angle lidar are inevitably nonuniformly distributed in space and, given that most processing algorithms require uniformly sampled data, an equivalent set of uniformly distributed data must be derived from the lidar measurements. A new class of algorithm is introduced to achieve this goal and applied to experimental shallow-angle lidar data. Compared to traditional methods the new approach has advantages in terms of both computational cost and the degree of nonuniformity that can be accommodated.