Development of a fiber based eye safe coherent wind Lidar system for urban wind field measurements

摘要

A compact coherent wind lidar system has been developed and is being tested in an urban environment. We use polarization maintaining fiber throughout the system to improve the stability of the heterodyne detected return signal. The 1.54 micron transmitter is designed using a master oscillator and pulsed power amplifier configuration. The receiver is operated in a coaxial arrangement and balanced detection is employed to reduce the effects of relative intensity noise, allowing for operation in the shot noise limited regime. Development and verification of the lidar system is enhanced by taking advantage of a set of ground based sodar, radar wind profiler and building top anemometers that are part of the New York City Meteorological Network. Operation in a coastal urban environment with a complex terrain such as New York City requires that the system be flexible enough to allow for adjustable operating conditions, tunable signal processing algorithms and user defined data products, so that the optimal performance can be chosen with a variety of practical applications in mind.