Distance-limited filter for extracting ground points

The extraction of points on the bare earth from point clouds acquired by airborne laser scanning is one of the most important steps for the generation of digital terrain models (DTM). This process is called “filtering”. However, most of the current filters erode the bare earth in steep sloped landscapes and at discontinuities, and they retain low vegetation. Therefore, a new filtering method for extracting ground points based on a distance limit is proposed in this paper. The angle criterion is used to assure the robustness of the algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed filtering method can effectively derive the ground points from point clouds in complex urban areas.