<title>Solid state coherent laser radar wind-field measurement systems</title>

Abstract

Diode-pumped solid-state pulsed coherent laser radar systems have recently been developed at Coherent Technologies, Inc., for the remote measurement of atmospheric wind fields. Flash- lamp pumped systems have been utilized since 1990 for obtaining wind field measurements. These flash-lamp pumped lidar systems have been applied to wind profiling, aircraft wake vortex measurements, airport wind shear and gust front monitoring, and military cargo air drops and many other applications. The diode-pumped coherent lidar systems currently available are capable of near turnkey operation. The Tm:YAG laser transceivers operate at 2.02 microns with output pulse energies of 1 t 10 mJ with PRFs of 1,000 to 100 Hz respectively. Range resolution of 30 - 75 m are typical. A real-time lidar signal processor has also been developed for collecting and analyzing laser radar (lidar) data. The signal processor is based on a commercial PC architecture and offers a real-time data acquisition, analysis, display, recording and playback environment. Wind measurements and overall system performance results are presented. Wind measurement performance, for a variety of applications, are presented using the flashlamp and diode pumped coherent lidars including measured wind profiles from ground and on aircraft, wake vortex tracking results, and example flows over mountain terrain.