Performance Assessment of Mobile Rayleigh Doppler Lidars for Middle Atmosphere Research

• Main Authors: Han Yuli, Zhao Ruocan, Sun Dongsong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: EDP Sciences 2016-01-01
• Series: EPJ Web of Conferences
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201611917004

Recently, two sets of mobile Rayleigh Doppler lidars were implemented in University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) for atmospheric gravity waves research. One of them works in a step stare scanning mode with azimuths corresponding to four cardinal points, while the other one consists of three fixed subassemblies: one points to the zenith and the two others are titled at 30° from the zenith with east and north pointings, respectively. They both operate at eye-safe wavelength 354.7 nm and adopt a triple Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) as frequency discriminator. In order to assess the performance of the Doppler lidars, comparison experiments were performed between them. Perhaps, it is the first time to make direct comparison between scanning and non-scanning Rayleigh Doppler lidars.