Optech Incorporated, the world’s leading manufacturer of advanced lidar, aerial digital camera and survey instruments, is pleased to announce the latest release of its popular IWD Intelligent Waveform Digitizer for its innovative line of ALTM Airborne Laser Terrain Mappers.

The new IWD-2 provides increased 12-bit amplitude sample resolution, enabling the detection and discrimination of target reflections from even the most complex waveform. The intelligence built into the digitizer ensures that only useful information is recorded. This translates into the efficient recording of waveform files that are more information-dense, yielding 1:1 recording rates at laser firing rates of up to 125 kHz-and automatic sub-sampling at higher rates. Coupled with ruggedized solid-state disk storage, the IWD-2 now offers unrestricted flight altitudes.

“Optech has been actively developing and selling waveform digitization systems for over 30 years,” says Michael Sitar, Airborne Products Manager for Optech. “Only from this extensive field experience can complex and robust algorithms be successfully developed to facilitate precise extraction of all meaningful information from the collected waveforms, regardless of the terrain or target complexity. With the IWD-2, our clients are empowered to deliver the highest-quality waveform data and extracted information to date.”

Available as an option to the ALTM, the IWD-2 can be installed by the customer in a matter of minutes on any digitizer-compatible ALTM model in the field, providing great flexibility and an on-demand capability to surveyors.

The new IWD-2 will be available for delivery for all ALTM systems in the fourth quarter of 2011.