LiDAR Technologies and Systems

Book excerpt: "LiDAR technology and Systems is a tutorial book, covering LiDAR Technology. The introduction sets lidar in context, as one of many sensor technologies utilizing electro-magnetic radiation. LiDAR is in the optical and infrared wavelengths, and it is an active sensor, which collects reflected EM radiation. It is similar to more familiar passive EO/IR sensors in wavelength, and similar to radar in that it uses reflected radiation emitted by the sensor. The second chapter goes the > 50 years of lidar history. Chapter 3 covers the link budget - how much signal a LiDAR must emit in order to get a certain number of reflected photons back. Chapter 4 discusses the rich phenomenology of LiDAR. One of the strengths of LiDAR is its' diverse phenomenology's. As a result, there are many flavors of LiDAR. The most common is 3D imaging, but there are many other types of lidars, with different measurement objectives. The next 4 chapters discuss components of a LiDAR. Chapter 5 discusses laser sources, chapter 6 LiDAR receivers, chapter 7 beam steering approaches, and chapter 8 LiDAR processing. The last 3 chapters are testing, metrics, and applications. Chapter 11, the applications chapter, picks 4 popular applications and discusses these LiDARs, and how to build them, for these applications. Chapter 11 as a result will repeats some information in earlier chapters, but in the context of a particular application"--