Mobile Doppler Wind Lidar Research Articles

Design and Implementation of Vibration Isolation System for Mobile Doppler Wind LIDAR

The operation of a Doppler wind LIDAR in a mobile environment is very sensitive to shocks and vibrations, which can cause critical failures such as misalignment of the optical path and damage to optical components. To be able to stabilize the LIDAR and to perform wind field measurements in motion, a shock absorption and vibration isolation system was designed and implemented. The performance of the vehicle-mounted Doppler wind LIDAR was tested in motion, first in a circular test route with a diameter of about 30 m and later in regular expressway traffic. The vibration isolation efficiency of the system was found to be higher than 82% in the main vibration area and shock dynamic deflection was smaller than maximal deflection of the isolator. The stability of the laser locking frequency in the same mobile environment before and after the vibration isolation system installation was also found to be greatly improved. The reliability of the vibration isolation system was confirmed by good results of the analysis of the LIDAR data, in particular the plane position indicator of the line of sight velocity and the wind profile.

Iodine-filter-based high spectral resolution lidar for atmospheric temperature measurements

This paper presents a method for measuring atmosphere temperature profile using a single iodine filter as frequency discriminator. This high spectral resolution lidar (HSRL) is a system reconfigured with the transmitter of a mobile Doppler wind lidar and with a receiving subsystem redesigned to pass the backscattering optical signal through the iodine cell twice to filter out the aerosol scattering signal and to allow analysis of the molecular scattering spectrum, thus measuring temperatures. We report what are believed to be the first results of vertical temperature profiling from the ground to 16 km altitude by this lidar system (power-aperture product=0.35 Wm(2)). Concurrent observations of an L band radiosonde were carried out on June 14 and August 3, 2008, in good agreement with HSRL temperature profiles.

Fine-measuring technique and application for sea surface wind by mobile Doppler wind lidar

The Key Laboratory of Ocean Remote Sensing of the Ministry of Education of China, Ocean University of China, has developed the first mobile Doppler wind lidar in China. As an important component of meteorological services for the Good Luck Beijing 2007 Qingdao International Regatta, the mobile Doppler wind lidar was used to measure the sea surface wind (SSW) with 100 m*100 m spatial and 10-min temporal resolution in Qingdao from 15 to 23 August 2007. We present the results from two aspects of this campaign. First, the lidar was operated in the fixed-direction mode and compared to SSW simultaneously measured by a collocated buoy. Second, we present lidar wind measurements throughout the regatta and show good agreement with the match situation of the International Regatta. In addition, we present a case study, accounting for the observation of sailboats stopped by the headwind. With considerable data accumulated, we have shown that the mobile Doppler wind lidar can indeed provide near real-time SSW in support of the sailing games. The lidar has also provided meteorological services for the 2008 Olympic sailing games from 8 to 22 August and Paralympics Sailing Games from 8 to 13 September 2008 in Qingdao.