Mobile Rayleigh Doppler wind lidar based on double-edge technique

We describe a mobile molecular Doppler wind lidar (DWL) based on double-edge technique for wind measurement of altitudes ranging from 10 to 40 km. A triple Fabry-Perot etalon is employed as a frequency discriminator to determine the Doppler shift proportional to the wind velocity. The lidar operates at 355 nm with a 45-cm-aperture telescope and a matching azimuth-over-elevation scanner that provides full hemispherical pointing. To guarantee wind accuracy, a single servo loop is used to monitor the outgoing laser frequency to remove inaccuracies due to the frequency drift of the laser or the etalon. The standard deviation of the outgoing laser frequency drift is 6.18 MHz and the corresponding velocity error is 1.11 m/s. The wind profiles measured by the DWL are in good agreement with the results of the wind profile radar (WPR). Evaluation is achieved by comparing at altitudes from 2 to 8 km. The relative error of horizontal wind speed is from 0.8 to 1.8 m/s in the compared ranges. The wind accuracy is less than 6 m/s at 40 km and 3 m/s at 10 km.