Quantitative Analysis of Differences Between Full Waveform Data and System Point Cloud Data from Airborne LiDAR

The superiority of waveform data is hard to evaluated and compared with point clouds quan-titatively due to a high correlation between two data sources from the most commonly used LiDARsystems.Leica ALS60airborne LiDAR system can record both of discrete return data and waveformdata simultaneously and independently.The raw waveforms are decomposed into individual pulse re-turns and compared with the laser points from the hardware system quantitatively.Data from typicalforest and urban areas are picked to perform a digitized assessment of the capability of waveform.Theresults show that waveform data can increase the vertical information in different types of ground ob-jects and spatial resolution of point cloud at a certain level and that the increment in forest area is high-er than that of urban area and bare earth.It is concluded that the penetration capability of laser pulseis more evident in full waveform data than in point cloud from ALS system itself,and that full wave-form LiDAR has much more potential in constructing the vertical parameters in the forest areas thanoriginal LiDAR with only point clouds.