LVIS employs a signal digitizer, disciplined with a very precise oscillator, to measure both the transmitted and reflected laser pulse energies versus time. These digitized and captured photon histories are known as waveforms. For the outgoing pulse, it represents the profile of the individual laser shot, and for the return pulse it records the interaction of that transmitted pulse with the target surface.

Processing of these waveforms yields many products; however, the primary products are the range from the instrument to the Earth's surface and the distribution of reflecting surfaces within the laser footprint area. For vegetated terrain, these surfaces include tree canopies, branches, other forms of vegetation, and open ground. For cryospheric data, these surfaces are snow, ice, crevasses, snowdrifts, and sea ice, possibly interspersed with open ocean, exposed rock, and water.

LVIS uses a waveform-based measurement technique to collect data instead of just timing detected returns of the laser pulse. The return signal is sampled rapidly, and stored completely for each laser shot. Retaining all waveform information allows post-processing of the data to extract many different products. With the entire vertical extent of surface features recorded, metrics can be extracted about the sampled area. An advantage of saving all of the waveform data is that new techniques can be applied to these data long after collection to extract even more information. For more information, see the NASA LVIS website.

LVIS is an airborne lidar scanning laser altimeter used by NASA to collect surface topography and vegetation coverage data. LVIS uses a signal digitizer with oscillator to measure transmitted and reflected laser pulse energies versus time and capture photon histories as waveforms. The laser beam and telescope field of view scan a raster pattern along the surface perpendicular to the aircraft heading as the aircraft travels over a target area. LVIS has a scan angle of approximately 12°, and can cover 2 km swaths from an altitude of 10 km. A typical collection size is 10 m to 25 m spots. In addition to waveform data, GPS satellite data are recorded at ground tie locations and on the airborne platform to precisely reference the aircraft position. An IMU is attached directly to the LVIS instrument and provides information required for coordinate determination.