Acquiring data in laser scanning with high measurement rates over long ranges frequently results in range ambiguities. Instruments with multiple-time-around capability (MTA), include information in the acquired data which the RiMTA software utilizes to resolve these ambiguities. Instead of requiring users to manually specify the correct MTA zone for each data set or even subset of data, RiMTA automatically calculates the MTA zone for each measurement.

In order to correctly determine the range to a target with a LiDAR instrument using time-of-flight measurements with short laser pulse intervals, it is necessary to correctly determine the correlation of each received echo pulse to its causative emitted laser pulse. At high pulse repetition rates (PRR) and large target ranges this definite allocation becomes ambiguous due to a limiting factor which may not be tweaked by engineer‘s skills: the speed of light.

Today’s RIEGL LiDAR instruments provide extremely high measurement rates as well as long measurement ranges. In such cases, target echoes received may not necessarily be associated with the immediately preceding laser pulse emitted (MTA-zone 1). Instead they may be associated with any of the previous laser pulses emitted. Therefore it is necessary to correctly identify each pulse echo with its correct originating laser emission. This is automatically done by RiMTA in a smootly integrated data proseccing workflow.