Development of airborne DIAL for water vapor measurement

For the future spaceborne water vapor DIAL system, an airborne differential absorption lidar (DIAL) system in the near infrared has been developed. An injection seeded triple pulse Ti:Sapphire laser is used for the transmitter and an LD pumped conductive-cooled Nd:YLF laser is employed for the pump laser of the Ti:sapphire laser. The entire system including the receiving telescope, receiving optics, an APD detector and signal processing system are developed. The system was onboard the Beechcraft B200 aircraft and flight tests of the system were conducted at three nights of November 1999.