A denoising approach for detection of canopy and ground from ICESat-2's airborne simulator data in Maryland, USA

Bowei Chen; Yong Pang

doi:10.1117/12.2202777

15 October 2015 A denoising approach for detection of canopy and ground from ICESat-2's airborne simulator data in Maryland, USA

Bowei Chen, Yong Pang

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9671, AOPC 2015: Advances in Laser Technology and Applications; 96711S (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2202777
Event: Applied Optics and Photonics China (AOPC2015), 2015, Beijing, China

Abstract

ICESat-2 is the successor to NASA’s ICESat (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite) mission scheduled to be launched in 2018. The new photon counting LiDAR onboard ICESat-2 introduced new challenges to the estimation of biomass and its dynamics, especially for the abundant photon noise in the atmosphere and below the ground. In order to remove the ambient noise and get a better detection of the canopy and the ground, this paper establishes an approach to identify potential signal from ambient noise automatically. The framework is based on the classic geodesic active contours method. Previous studies have suggested that this technique is very sensitive to initial contour, so we adopted NASA’s surface-finding algorithm to get the expected initialization for contour evolution. Observations from MABEL (Multiple- Altimeter Beam Experiment LiDAR), which is the ICESat-2’s high altitude airborne demonstrator, were used to validate this approach. The results showed that the potential signal photons were about 22% among the whole photons compared with about 78% background noise even in the night flight situation. The signal-to-noise ratio is expected to be smaller in the daytime flight situations, making it more difficult to distinguish the canopy. The results demonstrated that this technique can identify the potential signal photons effectively with error rate less than 4.2%. The proposed approach is appropriate for the present airborne simulated data with a high accuracy for flat surface with dense canopy. Future work will be focused on the stability and general applicability of this approach over large areas and different ground surfaces.

Citation Download Citation

Bowei Chen and Yong Pang "A denoising approach for detection of canopy and ground from ICESat-2's airborne simulator data in Maryland, USA", Proc. SPIE 9671, AOPC 2015: Advances in Laser Technology and Applications, 96711S (15 October 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2202777

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available

Members: $17.00

Non-members: $21.00 ADD TO CART

PROCEEDINGS
5 PAGES

DOWNLOAD PAPER SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

GET CITATION

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Get copyright permission Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace

KEYWORDS

Interference (communication)

Signal detection

Image segmentation

Satellites

LIDAR

Signal to noise ratio

Clouds

Show All Keywords

Keywords/Phrases

Search In:

Publication Years