Removal of range uncertainty of CW Wind Lidar by frequency modulation.

Frequency Modulation (FM) is a well-known technology but was never used in Continuous Wave (CW) Wind Lidars. The reason is because range and velocity can only be resolved for single hard targets like vehicles but not for dispersed targets like atmospheric aerosol. Here we present a FMCW system that uses the established focusing method for ranging and in addition a frequency modulated transmit signal. The origin of the scattered radiation is localized by focusing in a limited measuring volume. Because of this – by applying FM – the unavoidable range-velocity ambiguity of CW Wind Lidars can be resolved similarly as for hard targets. This is particularly important in conditions with fog or low hanging clouds (coastal or mountainous areas) or distant moving obstacles behind the measuring volume, or generally spoken in cases with strong gradients of the backscatter cross section. While out-of-focus contributions is a well-known concern of CW Lidar, we will show examples from FMCW field measurements first time revealing quantitatively the range uncertainty based on focus distance. Not surprisingly this uncertainty increases with height range, where the focus becomes less well-defined. Furthermore, the FMCW Wind Lidar allows also to correct uncertainties of mechanical focus distance setting. This is also mainly important at larger ranges where the focus distance becomes very sensitive to mechanical tolerances. Moreover, auxiliary measurements of wind direction, that are needed by CW systems for removing the sign-ambiguity of velocity, are obsolete, and there is no lower threshold of measurable windspeed. As a consequence wind measurements are feasible in street canyons, forest clearings and any other environment with strong vertical gradients.