Influence of Range Gate Width on Detection Probability and Ranging Accuracy of Single Photon Laser Altimetry Satellite

The influence of the single photon laser altimeter range-gate width on the detection probability and ranging accuracy is discussed and analyzed, according to the LiDAR equation, single photon detection equation and the Monte Carlo method to simulate the experiment. The simulated results show that the probability of detection is not affected by the range gate, while the probability of false alarm is relative to the gate width. When the gate width is 100 ns, the ranging accuracy can accord with the requirements of satellite laser altimeter. But when the range gate width exceeds 400 ns, ranging accuracy will decline sharply. The noise ratio will be more as long as the range gate to get larger, so the refined filtering algorithm during the data processing is important to extract the useful photons effectively. In order to ensure repeated observation of the same point for 25 times, according to the parameters of ICESat-2, we deduce the quantitative relation between the footprint size, footprint, and the frequency repetition. The related conclusions can provide some reference for the design and the development of the domestic single photon laser altimetry satellite