Impact Analysis of the Atmosphere Optical State on Wind Lidar Sounding Range

One of the most important questions for correlation lidars is the sounding range question.Correlation lidar sounding range greatly depends not only on the parameters of the equipment, but also on the optical state of the earth's atmosphere.In addition, there are currently two approaches to the estimation of lidar sounding range. In one approach, an estimate of the sounding range is obtained by equating the detector threshold power to the laser signal power recorded by the detector. In another approach, an estimate of the sounding range is obtained by equating the minimum detectable energy of the detected laser signal energy.This paper is about impact research of the atmosphere optical state on wind correlation lidar sounding range and compare sounding range estimates obtained under the two different approaches to the energy calculation lidar.The analysis is carried out for the surface layer of the atmosphere, the horizontal sounding path and the radiation wavelength of 0.532 μm. In atmospheric haze conditions, an empirical formula is used for the attenuation factor. The signal-to-noise ratio is assumed to be 100.Solid-state Nd:YAG Ekspla lasers NL319 (lamp pumping, pulse energy 5 J) and NL231-100 (diode pumping, pulse energy 90 mJ) were chosen as radiation sources.Hamamatsu photomultiplier tube R5070A with radiant sensitivity ~ 50 mA/W was chosen as a detector.It is shown that in a wide optical state range (meteorological range of visibility from 20 to 2 km) the lamp-pumped laser source sounding range with pulse energy 5 J varies from ~ 3,8 km to ~ 1,2 km and the diode-pumped laser source sounding range with pulse energy 90 mJ varies from ~ 1,1 km to ~ 0,64 km.The approach based on comparison of the detector threshold power with the received laser signal power overestimates the sounding range due to incomplete influencing consideration factors.