Drone LiDAR Coverage Calculator

Swath Width is pure flight geometry -- twice the altitude times the tangent of half the scan angle -- and has nothing to do with how many laser pulses are fired. Pulse Rate instead controls Points per Scan Line and, together with Scan Frequency, the point-cloud density inside whatever swath the altitude and scan angle already define.

Swath Width is the raw geometric strip the sensor can see at a given altitude and scan angle; it never changes with overlap. Effective Swath is that raw strip minus the portion deliberately re-scanned by the adjacent flight line for stitching, so a higher Side Overlap percentage always narrows the usable, non-duplicated strip width even though the sensor's actual field of view is unchanged.

No. Coverage Rate depends only on Effective Swath and Drone Speed -- how wide a strip is flown and how fast -- not on how many laser pulses are packed into that strip. Raising Pulse Rate increases point density on the ground already being covered, but it does not make the aircraft cover more square hectares per hour.

Scan Frequency shows up in both spacing terms that make up density -- raising it spreads a fixed pulse budget thinner across each scan line (widening cross-track spacing) while also shrinking the gap between successive scan lines as the drone advances (narrowing along-track spacing) -- and those two effects cancel exactly, for every combination of pulse rate and drone speed. Point Density comes out to Pulse Rate times 1000, divided by Swath Width times Drone Speed, with Scan Frequency algebraically absent from the result. Change Scan Frequency alone and Point Density will not move at all; adjust Pulse Rate, Swath Width (via Altitude or Scan Angle), or Drone Speed instead.