Solid-State Lidar for Monitoring Turbulent Air Motion

Under a prior NASA Phase I, an analysis of a pulsed, 2 um solid- state lidar system has been carried out to evaluate its potential for precision wind velocity measurements. A preliminary design has been specified for an airborne instrument. The proposed second phase of that study is intended to develop and test an appropriate long coherence time-pulsed transceiver. The program proposed herein will develop scanning and real-time signal processing components to be used with this transceiver and will carry out a flight demonstration of the integrated system. A capability to make measurements of atmospheric wind profiles off the aircraft track will be incorporated. The overall instrument is to be developed with the particular goal of making highly precise measurement of the ambient wind vector along the track of a research aircraft. This data will be coupled to simultaneous on- board measurements of species density so that estimates of the turbulent fluxes and growth/decay rates of various species in the planetary biosphere can be monitored. Additional application areas include: detection and monitoring of large high altitude wind velocity turbulence that can cause 'unstart' in supersonic aircraft; provide precision airdata autopilot input; and short- range windshear monitoring for commercial airliner wake vortex encounters.