Keywords: lidar

Summary

This demo shows how the user can drive a LIDAR simulation with a user-defined spatial beam profile. In this case, the beam is an approximation of a TEM22 beam, created from a 3x3 grid of Gaussian beams.

tem 3x3

The following demos, manuals and tutorials can provide additional information about the topics at the focus of this demo:

Details

This section explains any technical details of the simulation.

Important Files

This section highlights key files important to the simulation.

The Beam Data

This beam profile is represented in the file tem_3x3.txt which contains magnitude data (sometimes refered to as "burn paper" image) for the beam:

  • The data is expected to be define for a N x N grid (where N is a power of 2)

  • The data in the file is expected to be ASCII/Text and whitespace separated (spaces, tabs, newlines, etc.).

  • The values can be integer, floating-point, etc. Only the relative magnitude of the values is important.

The DIRSIG Platform Editor GUI has a wizard to import that data file.

Platform File

The key to this simulation is the demo.platform file, which is already configured to employ the user-defined beam profile. To see this component of the configuration:

  • Open the demo.platform file in the Platform Editor.

  • Select the Demo APD Ladar instrument.

  • On the Transmitter tab, click Edit.

  • Visualize the beam pattern as configured.

If you want to re-import the data or import new data, click the Import button.

Simulations and Results

The Single-Pulse Simulation

Run the single-pulse demo.sim file using DIRSIG4:

$ dirsig4 demo.sim

or using DIRSIG5:

$ dirsig5 demo.sim