Signature simulation and signal analysis for 3-D laser radar

From ordinary laser data you can easily determine the distance to the target in every single laser shot. A development from this original technique is to extract the reflected waveform from every laser shot. The latest addition to this technology is the 3-D laser radar, which gives an array of reflected laser pulse waveforms. Theories regarding the earlier forms of laser measurements can be, and have been, applied on this latest technology, the 3-D laser radar. Though until this master thesis they have not been gathered in a toolbox in MATLAB and therefore they have not been sufficiently tested and evaluated. The report contains the theoretical background for the simulation of the reflected waveform and then a validation of the algorithms. To analyze the simulated waveform, this report presents an attempt to use surface classification to detect the slope of a surface. The toolbox is implemented in MATLAB and is in this report only presented with description.