Abstract Social Network Analysis (SNA) has proven itself to embody the complex relationships between actors of groups inside out. Not only that, but it has also emerged as a new paradigm to investigate the structure of ties and its role on relationships between the actors. This research aims to investigate the patterns of relationships between authors and institutions working in LIght Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) research area. LIDAR has been in the limelight during recent years, especially autonomous vehicles for map-making and objection detection tasks. Researchers need insight into the current contributors and research areas to devise policies and set future targets for this important technology. Current study performs SNA to identify potential institutions and researchers that can help to achieve those goals. National and international co- authorship is analysed separately. A total of 4274 papers from Web of Science (WOS) database are collected from 1998 to September 2017. SNA measures of degree, closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality along with descriptive analysis are employed to study the patterns. Analysis reveals that the United States of America (USA) is the most central and significant country in terms of international co-authorship. China, Germany, the United Kingdom (UK) and Canada are ranked 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th in this list respectively. For co-institution network, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), University of Idaho and California Institute of Technology USA occupy 1st, 2nd, and 5th position respectively when top 5 institutions are considered. Consiglio NazionaleDelle Ricerche of Italy occupies 3rd position while Chinese Academy of Science, China, secures 4th place concerning betweenness centrality. Descriptive analysis reveals that during the last decade, co-author collaboration in scientific research has been elevated. Results show that research articles with 6 or more authors have higher citations than those with two to five authors. In addition, journals producing a higher number of papers and their corresponding citations are also discussed.

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[23] Usmani A. and Daud A., “Unified Author Ranking based on Integrated Publication and Venue Rank,” The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 111- 117, 2017. Imran Ashraf received his Ph.D. in Information & Communication Engineering from Yeungnam University, South Korea in 2018 and the M.S. degree in computer science from the Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden, in 2010. He has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Yeungnam University, as well. Currently, he is working as an Assistant Professor atthe Information and Communication Engineering Department, Yeungnam University,Gyeongsan, South Korea. His research areas include indoor positioning and localization, indoor location based services in wireless communication, sensors (LIDAR) for smart car, and data mining. Soojung Hur received her B.S degree from Daegu University, Gyeongbuk, Korea in 2001. She finished M.S course in Electrical Engineering from San Diego State University of San Diego in 2004. And she received M.S and Ph. D degree in Information and Communication Engineering from Yeungnam University, Korea in 2007 and 2012 respectively. She is working as research professor at the Mobile Communication Laboratory, Yeungnam University. Her current research interests include performance of mobile communication, indoor/outdoor location and unmanned vehicle. Yongwan Park received the BE and ME degrees in Electrical Engineering from Kyungpook University, Daegu Korea, in 1982 and 1984, respectively, and his MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from State University of New York at Buffalo, USA in 1989 and 1992, respectively. He worked at California Institute of Technology as a research fellow from 1992 to 1993. From 1994 to 1996, he served as a chief researcher for developing IMT-2000 system at SK Telecom, Korea. Since 1996, he has been a professor of information and communication engineering at Yeungnam University, Korea. From January to February of 2000, he was an invited professor at NTT DoCoMo Wireless Lab., Japan. He was also a visiting professor at UC Irvine, USA in 2003. From 2008 to 2009 he served as a director of Technology Innovation Center for wireless multimedia by Korean government. From 2009 to March 2017, he also served as the president of GITC (Gyeongbuk Institute of IT Convergence Industry Technology), Korea. He is also serving as the chairman of 5G Forum Convergence Service Committee in Korea. His current research areas of interest includes 5G systems in communication, OFDM, PAPR reduction, indoor location-based services in wireless communication and smart sensors (LIDAR) for smart car.