A 16-beam non-scanning swath mapping laser altimeter instrument

We have developed and successfully flown a 16-beam, non-scanning laser altimeter instrument with a swath width of 80 m and spatial resolution of 5 m. The Airborne Lidar Surface Topography Simulator (ALISTS) instrument was developed to demonstrate key technologies and a measurement approach achieving the efficiency required for the Lidar Surface Topography (LIST) mission. The approach employs a 10 kHz, near-infrared, microchip laser transmitter, beam splitting optics and waveform capture using a photon-sensitive, linear-mode detector array. In this paper we will present the instrument development effort and access the performance achieved during our two airborne campaigns.