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lidar points directly at the sun the spectral power density is insufficient to cause a problem,
and the interaction between two adjacent lidars can be neglected. Thorough electromagnetic
screening eliminates the risk of spurious spectral features caused by electrical interference for
any normal deployment.
4.3.5 Time-of-flight considerations
The round-trip time for light interrogating the atmosphere at a height of 100 m is less than 1
µs. On this timescale the ZephIR scanner moves the focused beam a distance of only 300 µm,
and thelaserphasedrifts byan insignificantamount.Thepolarisationstate ofthelidaroutput
is similarly frozen on this timescale, so no appreciable misalignment of loss of interference
efficiency is incurred.
4.4 End-to-end measurement process for CW Doppler lidar
4.4.1 Introduction
The wind parameter measurement process can be divided into a number of sequential steps.
This section describes the overall end-to-end process of the wind speed measurement process
for a CW coherent Doppler lidar wind profiler. Again, where appropriate, the ZephIR lidar is
used as an example.
4.4.2 Transmitter optics
The role of the transmitter is to provide a focused beam at a desired location. This location
can be moved around in space with a combination of (i) altering the focus range and (ii)
passingthebeamthroughascanningelementsuchasarotatingprism(wedge).Windprofiling
lidars conveniently employ a conical scan with its axis aligned vertically; the cone half-angle is
commonly of order 30 ◦ (i.e. the beam elevation angle is ∼ 60 ◦ ). Some turbine mounted lidars
use lower cone angles, the optimum choice depending upon a variety of factors including the
mounting position on the turbine, the rotor diameter and the measurement ranges of most
interest.
In a monostatic CW system, a Doppler-shifted contribution to the signal is generated via
light scattering from any moving part of the atmosphere that the beam illuminates. The
contribution from any point is weighted by the square of the beam’s intensity at that point
(Harris et al., 2001a). Hence it can be shown that focusing of an ideal Gaussian beam
(Siegman, 1986) gives rise to a spatial sensitivity along the beam direction that depends on
the inverse of beam area. It follows that the sensitivity rises to a peak at the beam waist, and
falls symmetrically on either side. There is also a spatial dependence of sensitivity transverse
to the beam, but because the beam is very narrow this is of little interest and can be ignored.
To a good approximation the axial weighting function for a CW monostatic coherent lidar is
given by a Lorentzian function (Sonnenschein and Horrigan, 1971; Karlsson et al., 2000):
F = Γ/π
∆ 2 +Γ 2,
where ∆ is the distance from the focus position along the beam direction, and Γ is the halfwidth
of the weighting function to the -3 dB point, i.e. 50% of peak sensitivity. Note that
F has been normalised such that it’s integral from −∞ to ∞ gives unity. To another good
approximation, Γ is given by:
Γ = λR2
πA2, (92)
where λ is the laser wavelength, here assumed to be the telecommunications wavelength
λ ∼ 1.55×10 −6 m, R is the distance of the beam focus from the lidar output lens, and A is
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