Synthesis of Airborne Laser Measurements for Navigation Algorithms

Airborne laser scanners are widely used for remote sensing and mapping and they are recently being applied to navigation of aerial and ground vehicles. Evaluation of new navigation algorithms in the presence of varying platform, sensor, and environment parameters requires high-fidelity measurement models of the airborne laser sensor. We present a procedure for the synthesis of airborne laser scanner measurements using aircraft flight trajectory, the scanner's mechanical and optical characteristics and the target environment model.