PulseWaves - an open, vendor-neutral, stand-alone, LAS-compatible full waveform LiDAR standard

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

for those that already process or are interested in processing full
waveform LiDAR, we are working on an open vendor-neutral, stand-alone,
LAS-compatible full waveform standard. a full waveform format that is
just as simple as the popular LAS format.

The PulseWaves format is geared towards end users such as
environmental analysts or forestry scientists. It is meant to be like
LAS but with waveforms instead of discrete returns. It is *not* meant
to be a format that captures all the proprietary scanner parameters
and internals of different vendors. That said, we will try to keep
hooks in place to potentially allow storing raw data (e.g. scanner
coordinate system measurements, aircraft attitude, boresight
angles, ...) in a later version as well.

The PulseWaves format is a calibrated full waveform product in flight-
line acquisition order that, for example, the FWS or the USGS may
request one day as a LiDAR deliverable in addition to the LAS files.
The current draft is expected to be subject to change before the
actual 1.0 version is released. One of the design goals is to remain
forward compatible and allow for changing demands such as additional
or different fields in the data records. You are welcome to join the
discussion here:

http://pulsewaves.org/

The PulseWaves file format for storing geo-referenced full waveform
data is simple to parse and use. It consists of two files: a PuLSe
file (*.pls) and a WaVeS (*.wvs) file.

The PuLSe file is stand-alone. It describes the geo-referenced
locations of the pulses. For each fired pulse it stores the geo-
referenced coordinates of the lasers's optical center and the geo-
referenced direction vector of the pulse together with the time of its
first and last recorded returning waveform sample. This file alone is,
for example, already sufficient to verify coverage or "sweep out" the
scanned 3D space.

The WaVeS file is *not* stand-alone and depends on the PuLSe file.
Each pulse in the PuLSe file contains an offset into the WaVeS file
where the actual digitized samples for the relevant segments of that
pulse are stored that describe its waveform in detail. The format how
the waveforms are sampled is kept flexible as each pulse references a
pulse sampling description.

Via the GPS time, the pulses in the PuLSe file and their associated
WaVeS may (optionally) be linked to the discrete returns stored in
corresponding ASPRS LASer files and vice-versa.

Regards,

Martin