Design of a monolithic Michelson interferometer for fringe imaging in a near-field, UV, direct-detection Doppler wind lidar.

The low-biased, fast, airborne, short-range, and range-resolved determination of atmospheric wind speeds plays a key role in wake vortex and turbulence mitigation strategies and would improve flight safety, comfort, and economy. In this work, a concept for an airborne, UV, direct-detection Doppler wind lidar receiver is presented. A monolithic, tilted, field-widened, fringe-imaging Michelson interferometer (FWFIMI) combines the advantages of low angular sensitivity, high thermo-mechanical stability, independence of the specific atmospheric conditions, and potential for fast data evaluation. Design and integration of the FWFIMI into a lidar receiver concept are described. Simulations help to evaluate the receiver design and prospect sufficient performance under different atmospheric conditions.

Airborne forward-pointing UV Rayleigh lidar for remote clear air turbulence detection: system design and performance.

A high-performance airborne UV Rayleigh lidar system was developed within the European project DELICAT. With its forward-pointing architecture, it aims at demonstrating a novel detection scheme for clear air turbulence (CAT) for an aeronautics safety application. Due to its occurrence in clear and clean air at high altitudes (aviation cruise flight level), this type of turbulence evades microwave radar techniques and in most cases coherent Doppler lidar techniques. The present lidar detection technique relies on air density fluctuation measurement and is thus independent of backscatter from hydrometeors and aerosol particles. The subtle air density fluctuations caused by the turbulent air flow demand exceptionally high stability of the setup and in particular of the detection system. This paper describes an airborne test system for the purpose of demonstrating this technology and turbulence detection method: a high-power UV Rayleigh lidar system is installed on a research aircraft in a forward-looking configuration for use in cruise flight altitudes. Flight test measurements demonstrate this unique lidar system being able to resolve air density fluctuations occurring in light-to-moderate CAT at 5 km or moderate CAT at 10 km distance. A scaling of the determined stability and noise characteristics shows that such performance is adequate for an application in commercial air transport.