Simulation of ultraviolet laser-induced fluorescence LIDAR for detecting bioaerosol

Abstract

ABSTRACT The biological warfare agent (BWA) is a kind of terrible threat during the war or raid from the terrorist. Last decade, the interest in utilizing ultraviolet laser-induced fluorescence (UV-LIF) LIDAR to detect the bioaerosol cloud has risen in order to measure the distribution of the bioaerosol particle. The UV-LIF LIDAR system can remotely detect and classify the bioaerosol agents and it is an active detecting system. As the infrared absorbin g in the atmosphere is less, the range of infrared remote sensing is very far. The infrared laser at 1064 nm wavelength firstly begins to work in the UV-LIF LIDAR system and the aerosol cloud can be detected at very long range through the elastic backscattering signal from aerosol irradiated by infrared laser. But the category of aerosol can’t be identified yet. If the infrared elastic backscattering level exceeds a threshold, UV laser at 355 nm wavelength will be triggered and induce the fluorescence. The excitated spectra of fluorescence can be used for discrimination of different aerosol species and particle concentration. This paper put forward for a UV-LIF LIDAR system model and the principle of the model is described summarily. Then the system parameters are presented and the simulation and analysis of the infrared elastic backscattering and laser-induced fluorescence are made, which is based on these parameters. Raman backscattering signal of Nitrogen gas in the atmosphere generally is taken to reduce measuring error, so the article also simulates this Raman backscatter signal at 387 nm wavelength. The studies above may provide some valuable instructions to the design of a real UV-LIF LIDAR system. Keywords: LIDAR, infrared, ultraviolet laser-induced fluorescence, Raman, bioaerosol, simulation