Activities carried out during this reporting period are summarized. Much of the work undertaken involved additions to the space-based coherent lidar model, including the addition of performance as a function of altitude; a receiver design section; the development of a simple orbit model suitable for use in plotting orbits, swath and shot patterns and estimating power availability; and the inclusion of Fascode derived atmospheric extinction. Assistance was also given to NASA MSFC in the design and analysis of lidar instruments, both for the AEOLUS conceptual designs within MSFC (one such analysis is included in an appendix) and of proposed NASA MSFC instruments for the New Millennium Program. Spiers, Gary D. Marshall Space Flight Center NAS8-38609...
An evaluation of the performance of a coherent Doppler lidar proposed by a team comprising the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Lockheed Martin Space Company, University of Wisconsin and Los Alamos National Laboratory to NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) program was performed. The design went through several iterations and only the performance of the final design is summarized here. Spiers, Gary D. Marshall Space Flight Center NASA-CR-202788, NAS 1.26:202788 NAS8-38609...
The 10th conference on coherent laser radar technology and applications is the latest in a series beginning in 1980, which provides a forum for exchange of information on recent events, current status, and future directions of coherent laser radar (or lidar or lader) technology and applications. This conference emphasizes the latest advancements in the coherent laser radar field, including theory, modeling, components, systems, instrumentation, measurements, calibration, data processing techniques, operational uses, and comparisons with other remote sensing technologies.
Radiophysical tools for measuring atmospheric dynamics include sodars, Doppler radars, and Doppler lidars. Among these, coherent Doppler lidars (CDLs) have been considered the best for remote measurement of wind turbulence. This is important not only for understanding the exchange processes in the boundary layer, but also in the applied aspect, such as aviation safety. CDLs significantly extend possibilities of experimental investigation of not only wind turbulence, but also coherent structures such as aircraft wake vortices. The authors of this book conducted field tests of the developed methods of lidar measurements of the wind velocity, atmospheric turbulence parameters, and aircraft wake vortices. This valuable resource, containing over 500 equations based on original results from the authors’ work, gives professionals a comprehensive description of the operating principles of continuous wave and pulsed coherent Doppler lidars. This book studies the possibilities of obtaining information about wind turbulence from data measured by continuous wave and pulsed CDLs. The procedures for estimation are described, as well as algorithms for numerical simulation. Results on the vortex behavior and evolution are then presented.
This thesis outlines the development of a vector retrieval technique, based on data assimilation, for a coherent Doppler LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). A detailed analysis of the Optimal Interpolation (OI) technique for vector retrieval is presented. Through several modifications to the OI technique, it is shown that the modified technique results in significant improvement in velocity retrieval accuracy. These modifications include changes to innovation covariance portioning, covariance binning, and analysis increment calculation. It is observed that the modified technique is able to make retrievals with better accuracy, preserves local information better, and compares well with tower measurements. In order to study the error of representativeness and vector retrieval error, a lidar simulator was constructed. Using the lidar simulator a thorough sensitivity analysis of the lidar measurement process and vector retrieval is carried out. The error of representativeness as a function of scales of motion and sensitivity of vector retrieval to look angle is quantified. Using the modified OI technique, study of nocturnal flow in Owens' Valley, CA was carried out to identify and understand uncharacteristic events on the night of March 27th 2006. Observations from 1030 UTC to 1230 UTC (0230 hr local time to 0430 hr local time) on March 27 2006 are presented. Lidar observations show complex and uncharacteristic flows such as sudden bursts of westerly cross-valley wind mixing with the dominant up-valley wind. Model results from Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS®) and other in-situ instrumentations are used to corroborate and complement these observations. The modified OI technique is used to identify uncharacteristic and extreme flow events at a wind development site. Estimates of turbulence and shear from this technique are compared to tower measurements. A formulation for equivalent wind speed in the presence of variations in wind speed and direction, combined with shear is developed and used to determine wind energy content in presence of turbulence.
The performance of the best velocity estimators was determined using a new technique that does not require in situ measurements to estimate the statistical performance of velocity estimates. A new theoretical prediction of the effects of the pulse averaging of the wind field on estimates of the spatial structure function and the variance of the velocity field has excellent agreement with simulations and the measurements from data. The conditions under which corrections for the effects of pulse averaging can be performed were determined. This permits accurate estimates of the velocity variance, the velocity structure function, and the energy dissipation rate when Kolmogorov scaling is valid or when a valid model exists for the spatial statistics. The performance of coherent Doppler lidar in the weak signal regime was determined by computer simulations and from data. Profiles of atmospheric statistics (mean velocity, velocity variance and energy dissipation rate for various lidar beam angles) were produced with corrections for the spatial averaging by the lidar pulse. Estimation algorithms for Doppler lidar data from cloudy regions were developed to handle high velocity shear and large gradients in backscatter. High resolution in situ measurements of atmospheric turbulence using an instrumented kite platform were produced.
Coherent structures are patterns in the wind field of the atmospheric boundary layer. The deployment of two scanning Doppler lidars facilitates the measurement of the horizontal wind field, but the inherent averaging processes complicate an interpretation of the results. To assess the suitability of this technique for coherent structure detection large-eddy simulations are used as a basis for virtual measurements, and the effects of the lidar technique on the wind field structure are analyzed.
