A customer relied on helicopter-based LiDAR to check whether radio links would work. Here's how a two-stage process gave the same assurance at a fraction of the cost.
The customer needed to know whether radio and transmission links would actually work, free of interference from clutter along the path, and had been using helicopter-based LiDAR to find out. It worked, but it was expensive, and expensive tools tend to get used less often than they should. The customer wanted an alternative that gave the same assurance without the same cost or the same logistics.
Three things needed answering for any given link: whether radio coverage would suffer interference from nearby clutter, whether the transmission path itself was clean, and, where it was not, exactly which features were causing the problem.
Point-to-point line of sight confirmed over distances up to 40km.
Rather than commission new LiDAR capture for every assessment, DAS built a two-stage process around data that often already existed. The first stage used existing LiDAR mapping, both Digital Terrain Modelling and Digital Surface Modelling, to assess radio and transmission performance at a fraction of the cost of a fresh helicopter survey. Where that data left genuine doubt, a second stage followed: a UAV survey targeted at the specific area of concern, gathering exactly the detail needed to resolve it.
Every assessment concluded with a full report: radio and path details, mapping, the path profile itself covering terrain, clutter, fresnel zones and K factor, and a summary identifying any features causing interference or obstruction, along with a proposal for resolving them.
Starting from data that already existed, rather than defaulting to a fresh capture every time, is what made the process flexible and cost effective without giving up accuracy. The two-stage structure meant the customer only paid for a UAV survey when the existing data genuinely could not settle the question.
The method holds up at distance too, with point-to-point line of sight confirmed over paths up to 40km. And it extends beyond a yes-or-no answer on interference: where useful, the same process can identify land ownership and advise on or carry out remedial works, or digitally twin both the A End and B End of a link to support the design work that follows.
