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Abstract. In agricultural production, the invention and use of pesticides are the key means to ensure good crop growth and increase grain production and income, which directly affects food security. The height of the plant protection drone operation is very important for the effectiveness of pesticide spraying. How to reasonably control the flying height becomes a problem for the plant protection drone operation. This paper summarizes and analyzes the detection distance sensors mounted on drones and compares the advantages and disadvantages of GPS, barometers, ultrasonic sensors, and laser sensors, at the same time proposes a detection system based on laser radar to detect plant protection UAV operation height. The system includes a data acquisition module, a data processing module, a data fusion module, a data transmission module and a data monitoring module. Experiments have proves that this algorithm error is within 3% to meet the actual production needs, which provides a technical idea for agricultural aviation plant protection.