An Adaptive Filter Based on Local Slope by Adjusting Elliptic Filter Kernel for ICESat-2 Photon Counting Laser Altimetric Data

Abstract

The Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) was launched on September 15th, 2018, which continues to perform measurement tasks as the successor to ICESat. Unlike full waveform technology of ICESat, ICESat-2 employs micropulse photon counting technology, which provides higher accuracy, but produces plenty of noise. This paper proposes an adaptive filter based on local slope by adjusting elliptic filter kernel. The general approach is 1) data preprocessing, 2) Gaussian density calculation, 3) OTSU adaptive threshold calculation. This method is seen to be robust in identifying signal points from high background noise points and suitable for low density data caused by slope.