Abstract
Doppler wind LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) makes use of the principle of optical Doppler shift between the reference and backscattered radiations to measure radial velocities at distances up to several kilometers above the ground. Such instruments promise some advantages, including its large scan volume, movability and provision of 3-dimensional wind measurements, as well as its relatively higher temporal and spatial resolution comparing with other measurement devices. In recent decades, Doppler LiDARs developed by scientific institutes and commercial companies have been well adopted in several real-life applications. Doppler LiDARs are installed in about a dozen airports to study aircraft-induced vortices and detect wind shears. In the wind energy industry, the Doppler LiDAR technique provides a promising alternative to in-situ techniques in wind energy assessment, turbine wake analysis and turbine control. Doppler LiDARs have also been applied in meteorological studies, such as observing boundary layers and tracking tropical cyclones. These applications demonstrate the capability of Doppler LiDARs for measuring backscatter coefficients and wind profiles. In addition, Doppler LiDAR measurements show considerable potential for validating and improving numerical models. It is expected that future development of the Doppler LiDAR technique and data processing algorithms will provide accurate measurements with high spatial and temporal resolutions under different environmental conditions.
Highlights
Wind field measurements are fundamental observations in several scientific areas such as meteorology and aerodynamics
Instead of acoustic energy utilized in Sound Detection and Ranging Devices (SODARs), LiDARs obtain wind field measurements based on the light energy backscattered by aerosols
Pulsed Doppler LiDARs developed by scientific institutes such as Deutsches Zentrum für Luftund Raumfahrt (DLR), literally German Center for Aviation and Space Flight, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and commercial companies such as Leosphere (France), Halo Photonics (UK) and Lockheed Martin Coherent Technologies (USA) have been used worldwide to study wake vortices, strong wind phenomena, and aerosol backscatters
Summary
Wind field measurements are fundamental observations in several scientific areas such as meteorology and aerodynamics. Instead of acoustic energy utilized in SODARs, LiDARs obtain wind field measurements based on the light energy backscattered by aerosols. The primary advantage of Doppler LiDARs is their unique capability to remotely measure atmospheric winds with relatively higher resolutions compared to SODARs [10]. Compared to the direct detection system, the coherent detection system has several advantages: (1) Only the spectral components close to the reference signal are unfiltered, the coherent system has high tolerance of background light [12,13]; (2) The uncertainties are independent of temperature and properties of optical components in the system [14]; (3) The enhanced receiver sensitivity reduces the time required for wind measurements [15,16]. The sections are organized as follows: basic concepts are introduced to offer a glimpse of LiDAR measurements in Section 2; Section 3 gives a report of LiDAR applications in the areas of aerospace, wind energy and meteorology; and in Section 4, challenges and trends for future LiDAR research are discussed
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