Adaptive High-Speed Echo Data Acquisition Method for Bathymetric LiDAR

The real-time data acquisition system (RTDAQS) in the bathymetric light detection and ranging (LiDAR) instrument, named “GQ-Cormorant 19,” previously developed by our group cannot completely acquire the echo data from the water surface and water bottom owing to the inaccurate determination of the instant of echo signal acquisition, resulting in echo data loss. Therefore, this study developed an adaptive echo signal acquisition method based on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. The proposed method utilizes the flying height for roughness adjustment, and the peak of echo signal detection and the fine adjustment are combined to accurately determine the instant of echo signal acquisition. The improved RTDAQS onboard the GQ-Cormorant 19 was mounted on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and unmanned surface vessel (USV) platforms and the performance was verified through an indoor corridor and several outdoor water fields. The experimental results demonstrated that the improved RTDAQS can improve the effective echo data rate by 11.5% when compared with the previously developed RTDAQS. Therefore, it can be concluded that the improved RTDAQS can implement the adaptive high-speed acquisition of echo data and obtain high-quality echo data acquisition (DAQ) on various platforms, such as UAV and USV.