Airborne topo-bathy lidar system and methods thereof

A method of aerial surveying, comprising:

• flying an airborne LiDAR bathymetry system at an altitude of at least around 10,000 feet, wherein the airborne LiDAR bathymetry system comprises a receiver system, a detector system, and a laser transmission system comprising a first conditioning leg for conditioning a first output beam and a second conditioning leg for conditioning a second output beam, wherein the receiver system comprises an objective, a reflective aperture relay, a scanning wobble mirror, and a down-collimating telescope;
• aligning the first output beam and the second output beam with beam combiner optics;
• emitting from the laser transmission system the aligned first and second output beams, wherein the first out beam is at a first wavelength and the second output beam at a second wavelength;
• and
• collecting data by the airborne LiDAR bathymetry system.

A method of aerial surveying, comprising:

• mounting an airborne LiDAR bathymetry system to an aircraft;
• flying the aircraft at an altitude above a sea surface;
• emitting from the LiDAR bathymetry system a first output beam at a 532 nm wavelength;
• emitting from the LiDAR bathymetry system a second output beam at a 1064 nm wavelength, wherein the beam combiner optics concentrically align the first output beam and the second output beam;
• and
• collecting topographic bathymetric data by a receiver system of the airborne LiDAR bathymetry system, wherein the receiver system comprises an objective, a reflective aperture relay, a scanning wobble mirror, and a down-collimating telescope.

A method of aerial surveying, comprising:

• mounting an airborne LiDAR system to an aircraft, wherein the airborne LiDAR system comprises:
• (i) a laser transmission system,
• (ii) a detector system comprising of a plurality of Avalanche Photodiodes (APD) supporting linear mode LiDAR and a Geiger-mode avalanche photodiode (GmAPD) coupled to a GmAPD reformatting system, and
• (iii) a receiver system comprising an objective, a reflective aperture relay, a scanning wobble mirror, and a down-collimating telescope a, and;
• flying the aircraft above a topographic surface;
• emitting from the laser transmission system an output beam at a wavelength;
• and
• collecting topographic data by the airborne LiDAR system.