Robust Noise Suppression Technique for a LADAR System via Eigenvalue-Based Adaptive Filtering

The laser detection and ranging system (LADAR) is widely used in various fields that require 3D measurement, detection, and modeling. In order to improve the system stability and ranging accuracy, it is necessary to obtain the complete waveform of pulses that contain target information. Due to the inevitable noise, there are distinct deviations between the actual and expected waveforms, so noise suppression is essential. To achieve the best effect, the filters' parameters that are usually set as empirical values should be adaptively adjusted according to the different noise levels. Therefore, we propose a novel noise suppression method for the LADAR system via eigenvalue-based adaptive filtering. Firstly, an efficient noise level estimation method is developed. The distributions of the eigenvalues of the sample covariance matrix are analyzed statistically after one-dimensional echo data are transformed into matrix format. Based on the boundedness and asymptotic properties of the noise eigenvalue spectrum, an estimation method for noise variances in high dimensional settings is proposed. Secondly, based on the estimated noise level, an adaptive guided filtering algorithm is designed within the gradient domain. The optimized parameters of the guided filtering are set according to an estimated noise level. Through simulation analysis and testing experiments on echo waves, it is proven that our algorithm can suppress the noise reliably and has advantages over the existing relevant methods.