Design and demonstration of airborne hyperspectral imaging LiDAR system based on optical fiber array focal plane splitting

Abstract

The acquisition and application of high-resolution ground object elevation information and spectral information is a frontier scientific problem in the development of earth observation technology. In this paper, we designed and demonstrated an airborne full-waveform hyperspectral imaging lidar system. The hyperspectral lidar adopts the mode of optical fiber array focal plane splitting, which can effectively detect the echo signal in a wide spectrum. The hyperspectral lidar uses a supercontinuum laser as the illumination source. A single pulse emitted from the laser can achieve a simultaneous acquisition of spectral information and elevation information. Through the spectral calibration of the hyperspectral lidar, we have given the center wavelength and bandwidth of 56 channels. Results show that the spectral range of the hyperspectral lidar covers 400–900 nm, and the spectral resolution of each detection channel is close to 9 nm. Because one detection channel is coupled with three optical fibers, the resolution of a single optical fiber of the hyperspectral lidar is close to 3 nm. The successful development of the airborne hyperspectral lidar can accumulate a large number of data sets for research in the field of remote sensing.