BELA receiver performance modeling over the BepiColombo mission lifetime

Performance modeling of the BepiColombo laser altimeter (BELA) receiver has been performed in the context of return pulse detection probability and measurement accuracies. Models have been extended beyond earlier work [Gunderson, K., Thomas, N., Rohner, M., 2006. A laser altimeter performance model and its application to BELA. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 44, 3308–3319] to explore the receiver response to time-varying orbital conditions and potential instrument component degradations over the mission lifetime. New signal processing derivations are presented, and the set of measurement accuracy predictions has been broadened to include albedo and return pulse width in addition to range accuracy. Two detector gain optimization derivations are also described and applied as guides towards the identification of a preferred performance enhancing strategy.