Iterative Deconvolution Algorithm for Improving Range Resolution of a CO2-Laser Based Lidar System

An iterative deconvolution algorithm for improving range resolution of long-pulse lidars is proposed, and can be applied to the lidar data obtained with the typical pulse of a CO₂-laser which consists of a gain-switching peak and a long tail. The lidar signal itself with certain temporal shift is set to be the start profile for the unknown maximally resolved profile in the proposed technique, and then is corrected in proportion to the difference between the lidar return calculated with the assumption and the real one. The same process is repeated until the correction is smaller than tolerance. Simulations are made to test the performance of the proposed algorithm. We investigate the errors in the vicinity of data boundary in the retrieved profile when a part of lidar data is absent. The sensitivity of the iteration algorithm to noise in the lidar signals and the laser pulse profile is also numerically determined.