PRELIMINARY QUALITY ANALYSIS OF GF-7 SATELLITE LASER ALTIMETER FULL WAVEFORM DATA

Abstract. The full-waveform data is the core data of GaoFen-7 (GF-7) satellite laser altimeter, and evaluation of waveform data quality is an important step and premise for satellite laser altimetry and quality control. In this paper, the full waveform data quality assessment and analysis of GF-7 laser altimeter is implemented during the period of on-orbit experiment, and the real waveform data of many orbits is used to quantitatively describe the characteristic parameters of the transmitted waveform and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and the result of two beam lasers is compared. The conclusion is validated that the GF-7 laser altimeter can obtain effective waveform data and the echo waveform availability of the experimental data is approximate 72.59%, moreover, the quality of beam 1 is slightly better than that of the beam 2. The laser temperature is an important indication of the quality of transmitted waveform according to the SNR changing. The good SNR value of the waveform and small footprint size will be helpful for the terrain information extraction and analysis, although the repetition frequency is low.