376 JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 18

High-Resolution Doppler Lidar for Boundary Layer and Cloud Research

CHRISTIAN J. GRUND* AND ROBERT M. BANTA
NOAA/ERL/Environmental Technology Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado

JOANNE L. GEORGE
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado

JAMES N. HOWELL, MADISON J. POST, AND RONALD A. RICHTER

NOAA/ERL/Environmental Technology Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado

ANN M. WEICKMANN
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado

(Manuscript received 27 May 1999, in final form 18 April 2000)

ABSTRACT
The high-resolution Doppler lidar (HRDL) was developed to provide higher spatial, temporal, and velocity
resolution and more reliable performance than was previously obtainable with CO 2-laser-based technology. The
improved performance is needed to support continued advancement of boundary layer simulation models and
to facilitate high-resolution turbulent flux measurements. HRDL combines a unique, eye-safe, near-IR-wave-
length, solid-state laser transmitter with advanced signal processing and a high-speed scanner to achieve 30-m
range resolution and a velocity precision of ;10 cm s21 under a variety of marine and continental boundary
layer conditions, depending on atmospheric and operating conditions. An attitude-compensating scanner has
been developed to facilitate shipboard marine boundary layer observations. Vertical velocities, fine details of
the wind profile near the surface, turbulence kinetic energy profiles, and momentum flux are measurable with
HRDL. The system is also useful for cloud studies. The HRDL technology, capabilities, and field performance
are discussed.

1. Introduction and background and can provide three-dimensional volumes of wind

Pulsed Doppler lidar is a relatively new addition to
the technology of atmospheric wind sensing. Lidar is
similar in many respects to radar except that it transmits
bursts of light instead of radio waves and, because of
the short wavelengths employed, it can use aerosol par-
ticles as atmospheric scattering targets. Aerosols have
negligible fall speeds in the context of flows studied by
the lidar and are excellent tracers of air motions. By
observing the Doppler shift of the light scattered by
aerosols, the lidar can remotely measure air velocities.
With scanning capability, the instrument can map out
the radial wind u r field in the horizontal and vertical
* Current affiliation: LightWorks, LLC, Boulder, Colorado.
Corresponding author address: Robert M. Banta, NOAA/ERL
(ET2), 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305-3328.
E-mail: robert.banta@noaa.gov
data.
A scanning Doppler lidar based on pulsed CO 2 laser
technology was successfully demonstrated and has been
operated by the Environmental Technology Laboratory
(ETL) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-
ministration’s Office of Atmospheric Research (NOAA/
OAR) since the early 1980s (Post and Cupp 1990).
Called TEACO 2 , it has provided valuable insight into
the kinematic structure of many small-mesoscale flow
systems, including the sea breeze, downslope wind-
storms, flow in complex terrain, thunderstorm gust-front
outflows, the dry line, and a prescribed forest fire (In-
trieri et al. 1990; Neiman et al. 1988; Banta et al. 1992,
1993, 1995, 1996, 1997a; Banta 1995; Clark et al. 1994;
Levinson and Banta 1995). Doppler lidar has also made
important contributions in the study of clouds (Intrieri
et al. 1995).
Following the success of the CO 2 Doppler lidar in
studying small-mesoscale flows, it became evident that
Doppler lidar had great potential for measuring the mean

q 2001 American Meteorological Society

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MARCH 2001 GRUND ET AL.
and turbulent velocity structure of the atmospheric
boundary layer (ABL). Its ability to map out the fines-
cale velocity fields would immediately provide insight
into the coherent structure of the turbulence; vertical
staring would provide data and statistics on the fluc-
tuating vertical velocity w, and scanning techniques,
which had been developed for Doppler radar to evaluate
boundary layer turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) and
momentum flux profiles, could be applied to Doppler
lidar. The ABL is an important part of the atmosphere
that serves as a reservoir for quantities passing between
the earth’s surface and the free atmosphere. Pollutants
are released, transformed, and transported in the ABL
before being deposited at the surface or carried upward
into the free troposphere, with resultant impacts on the
biosphere and human activity. Despite the importance
of this layer, it is still poorly understood except in some
simplified cases, such as the unstable, barotropic, day-
time convective boundary layer (CBL).
Ideally, such a boundary layer instrument would pro-
vide velocity precision of 0.1 m s21 , range resolution
better than 50 m, and temporal resolution of 1 s or finer.
Despite more than a decade of development and suc-
cessful application, it appeared that CO 2 pulsed-laser-
based systems had limitations in meeting the spatial
sampling requirements, velocity resolution, and the
long-term stability sought for a boundary layer instru-
ment. The best that had been achieved up to that time
with CO 2 systems was ;0.5 m s21 and 350-m range
resolution (Post and Cupp 1990). Consequently, ETL
sought to develop a coherent Doppler lidar employing
more compact, shorter wavelength; recently demonstrat-
ed solid-state laser technology; and advanced signal pro-
cessing to achieve performance optimized for the
boundary layer.
When development funding for the high-resolution
Doppler lidar (HRDL) was first obtained in 1991, new
near-infrared, eye-safe-wavelength, solid-state laser
technology was just emerging, and a flash-lamp-pumped
(low repetition rate), coherent Doppler lidar using this
technology had been demonstrated (Henderson et al.
1993). Although diode-pumped high-repetition-rate la-
sers suitable for coherent Doppler lidars had been con-
structed (Henderson and Hale 1990), pulse energies
were small, and lidar systems had not yet been built
using these lasers. Since the needed technologies were
neither available commercially within budgetary con-
straints nor did they meet performance criteria, an in-
ternal program was initiated to develop and integrate
the laser, transceiver, signal processor, scanner, and en-
vironmental field container. This project has resulted in
HRDL.
2. Technology
a. Performance trade-offs and laser transmitter
design
1) SOLID-STATE VERSUS CO 2
Several issues led to the decision not to use traditional
gas-discharge-excited, injection-seeded CO 2 laser tech-
377
nology for HRDL. These include substantial pulse fre-
quency chirp, size, weight, gas handling, and refill re-
quirements; atmospheric water-vapor continuum ab-
sorption; and the need for liquid-nitrogen-cooled (LN 2 )
detectors at 10-mm wavelengths. Although more recent
systems (e.g., Schwiesow and Spowart 1996) marginally
improved on the performance of injection-seeded,
pulsed CO 2 lidars, and new radio frequency–excited
master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) designs (e.g.
Brewer et al. 1997) have produced impressive perfor-
mance improvements, the key reason to consider other
technologies is the persisting trade-off between wave-
length and velocity resolution for a given range reso-
lution in the presence of noise.
In pulsed Doppler lidars at any particular wavelength,
range and velocity resolution are competing perfor-
mance specifications, but the trade-off range between
these parameters can generally be improved by going
to a shorter wavelength. As the transmitted pulse width
t p is decreased to achieve improved range resolution,
the spectral bandwidth of the pulse, f 2 , increases ap-
proximately as 1/(2pt p ) so that all returns from the
atmosphere are also broadened. As the bandwidth in-
creases, it becomes increasingly difficult to estimate the
spectral peak of the return in the presence of noise, and
hence velocity precision suffers. This can be seen from
the Cramer–Rao Lower Bound (CRLB), which sets the
theoretical limit on the local variance s2 of frequency
determined from any estimator. Under the reasonable
assumption of a Gaussian spectrum, the ultimate limit
on frequency determination by any optical system (not
just coherent systems) is dependent on the signal band-
width f 2 and N, the number of photons in the mea-
surement, as given by Rye and Hardesty [1993a, their
Eq. (18)]:
f 22
s2 $ . (1)
N
While coherent systems cannot reach this limit, the re-
lationship between signal strength, bandwidth, and var-
iance remains.
Equation (1) illustrates that in the absence of noise,
frequency estimates depend little on the shape or width
of the signal spectrum. With finite fixed noise, esti-
mation variance depends primarily upon the width of
the signal spectrum, which depends on many systematic
factors. Such factors include the laser pulse width,
shape, and frequency chirp and atmospheric conditions
such as turbulence within the measurement volume
(Frehlich 1997), refractive turbulence along the laser
path (which can cause jitter in the lidar beam pointing
angle and introduce a scanning velocity of its own), and
the spatial distribution of backscatter (which affects the
number of signal photons). In cases where the lidar beam
encounters both a strong velocity gradient with range
and a correlation between backscatter and velocity, ap-
parent velocity bias and variance can be introduced
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378 JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 18

FIG. 1. Plot of SNR vs. C 2N, a measure of the atmospheric optical turbulence intensity level, for
a flashlamp-pumped, 2.1-mm, coherent Doppler lidar (8) and ETL’s TEACO 2 (10.59 mm) coherent
Doppler lidar (3). Data were acquired over a nearly horizontal path ;3 m AGL over a flat surface
at the Table Mountain test facility north of Boulder, Colorado. Backscatter was from a sandpaper
calibration target at a range of 2 km. Data show degradation of 2- mm performance at high
turbulence levels. Anomalous values at high C 2N are believed to be due to spatial pulse broadening
by the atmosphere, causing the pulse to scatter from the supporting van as well as the target, and
resulting in wide variations in backscatter.

through range-weighting errors. While the effect of each
of these instrument and atmospheric factors can be treat-
ed independently (see, e.g., Frehlich et al. 1997, 1998),
they often interact in strongly nonlinear ways, and it is
generally most advantageous to estimate system per-
formance from data acquired under specific atmospheric
scenarios. We present HRDL performance estimations
in comparison to the CRLB in section 3 for a variety
of atmospheric conditions.
The Doppler frequency shift D f Dop for a given ve-
locity V is inversely proportional to the transmitted
wavelength l, according to
D f Dop 5 2V/l.
Thus, for a given velocity and range resolution, it is
evident that at shorter wavelengths, D f Dop is a larger
fraction of the pulse bandwidth. The foregoing suggests
that operation at wavelengths shorter than those of pre-
viously employed CO 2-laser-based technologies oper-
ating near 10.6 mm [typically having ;0.5 m s21 ve-
locity precision and 120–300 m range resolution (Post
and Cupp 1990; Mayor et al. 1997a)] facilitates achiev-
ing the desired simultaneous improvements in velocity
resolution and in range resolution.
Operation at an arbitrarily short wavelength is not
without penalty. As l is shortened, signal degradation
due to the effects of refractive index turbulence on the
wavefront (Fig. 1) limit the effective telescope aperture
size (Belmonte and Rye 2000), and direct or scattered
solar background light may affect detector performance.
Also, to maintain the same heterodyne detection effi-
ciency, the optical quality requirements, and hence the
cost, of optical components rapidly increases. At wave-
lengths ,1.45 mm, eye safety (ANSI 1993) becomes
an important issue, placing restrictions on many poten-
tial applications for a scanning boundary layer lidar.
Shorter l operations also present several technological
challenges. Since the Doppler shift is larger for a given
velocity, the needed signal digitization rate increases to
achieve the Nyquist rate for the peak measurable speed.
(2) Thus, raw data volume and required processing ‘‘horse-
power’’ also linearly increase with decreasing l. The
number of photons per unit power scales as l, so more
transmitted power is required to achieve the same return
signal statistics for a given backscatter cross section.
However, the latter effect may be compensated for by
the l21 to l22 wavelength dependence of typical at-
mospheric aerosol backscatter.
2) HIGH PULSE-REPETITION RATE
Achieving high temporal or transverse spatial (i.e.,
perpendicular to the beam) resolution, especially while
scanning, requires a rapid velocity profile acquisition

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MARCH 2001 GRUND ET AL.
rate and correspondingly high pulse repetition rate
(PRR) laser. A peculiarity of coherent detection places
additional requirements on PRR for achieving high-ve-
locity precision as well, as described below.
In typical coherent-detection lidar, light returning
from the atmosphere is mixed with frequency-stable,
continuous-wave (CW) laser light [local oscillator (LO)]
of a wavelength very close to that transmitted. The re-
sulting optical interference between the LO and atmo-
spheric backscatter causes a temporal modulation of the
combined light amplitude at the frequency difference
between the two beams. This ‘‘beat note’’ is the signal
that is detected, and the frequency of the beat note in-
dicates the Doppler shift.
The beat signal amplitude is, however, not steady in
time, even from a homogeneously backscattering at-
mosphere, because spatially, the backscatter return is
composed of ‘‘speckles.’’ These are the same sort of
bright and dark spots of laser light (coherent) commonly
observed in the pattern of CW laser light cast on a wall.
A speckle is a region in which the wave functions of
the signal photons constructively interfere. When the
wave functions are out of phase, destructive interference
causes the signal to fade.
The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for a single speckle
is at most 1; either the speckle is detected or it is not,
regardless of how many photons combine to produce
the speckle. Thus, the velocity precision is limited by
the speckle noise, regardless of the signal power. Es-
timates of velocity are therefore most easily improved
by averaging the velocity estimates from independent
speckles. Note that because the frequency of the speckle
is determined from the time series of the amplitude of
the return signal, this may equivalently be viewed as a
signal level of one photon per velocity-resolution band-
width.
The standard deviation of the estimate improves with
the square root of the number of independent speckles
included in the average. Velocity precision may be im-
proved either by averaging independent estimates in
range or by averaging estimates from independent pro-
files. Averaging in range diminishes range resolution.
Thus, the PRR must be significantly increased over that
needed for spatial sampling to achieve high-velocity
precision if range resolution is to be preserved.
The high PRR required was achieved by choosing
CW diode-pumping and acousto-optic Q-switched op-
eration for the HRDL laser transmitter. The CW diode-
pumping approach also minimizes the cooling require-
ments on the laser crystal. This is important because
laser-head vibration induced by excess cooling-water
flow results in added frequency jitter.
3) CHOOSING TM:LU, YAG
The wavelength region between 1.4 and 3 mm was
chosen as the best compromise between eye safety and
Doppler performance. In this region, atmospheric gases
379
FIG. 2. Atmospheric absorption near the HRDL operating wave-
length calculated for a sea-level midlatitude summer standard at-
mosphere using the Hitran database (Rothman et al. 1987).
(largely CO 2 and water vapor) exhibit substantial dis-
crete absorption lines that must be avoided to minimize
range-limiting attenuation of the lidar signal. Figure 2
shows the expected atmospheric attenuation in this
wavelength region. For acceptable ABL performance
over a potential 15-km range, attenuation due to gaseous
species should be at most a few percent per kilometer
(the lidar signal is subject to attenuation on both legs
of the round trip). This can be achieved at only a few
wavelengths near 1.6 and 2.1 mm. Thus, because the
transmitted wavelength is determined by the laser crys-
tal medium, finding a wavelength that minimizes at-
mospheric absorption becomes a critical criterion in
choosing the best of the available laser materials.
No suitable lasers meeting the high PRR and fre-
quency purity requirements were available near 1.6 mm.
Near 2.1 mm, lasers employing thulium (Tm) and hol-
mium (Ho) in yttrium-aluminum-garnet (YAG) and
YAG-variant crystals had been demonstrated. Tm:YAG
was originally chosen because the Tm system lases ef-
ficiently near room temperature whereas Ho-based la-
sers require significant cooling, a disadvantage for a sea-
going field system. Fortunately, excellent room tem-
perature InGaAs detectors [having noise equivalent
power (NEP) ; 1.2 E213 W Hz21/2 and quantum ef-
ficiency (QE) ; 65%] are also available at these l’s.
In addition, the presence of significant water vapor ab-
sorption lines within the Tm tuning range leaves open
the possibility for the future development of simulta-
neous water vapor differential-absorption lidar (DIAL)
and Doppler capability.
Tm:YAG lases most efficiently at 2.0212 mm, where
the fluorescence of the material peaks. As can be seen
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FIG. 3. Simplified HRDL transceiver schematic. HBS: hollographic beam sampler; PBS: thin-film
polarization beam splitter; QWP: quarter-wave plate.

in Fig. 2, this l does not coincide with a local wave- erence laser and the unique diode-pumped, injection-
length for optimum atmospheric transmission. Conse- seeded pulse laser. The lidar employs three different
quently, HRDL employs a variant, Tm:Lu, YAG (4% types of laser: 1) the pulse laser, which is the heart of
Tm, 50% Y, 50% Lu), in which some of the yttrium is the system and performs similar functions to the power
replaced with lutetium (Lu). This variant lases most oscillator (PO) in Post and Cupp (1990), generates the
efficiently at 2.0218 mm, corresponding to a local min- narrow-bandwidth, frequency-stable, high-energy 2-mm
imum in atmospheric absorption (Kametic et al. 1994). outgoing (transmit) pulse for HRDL; 2) the pump lasers,
an array of laser diodes coupled to the pulse laser cavity
b. The HRDL transceiver by fiber optics, elevates the energy level of the pulse
laser to prime it for lasing; and 3) the CW reference
Figure 3 shows a simplified schematic of the HRDL laser provides a wavelength-stable, high-beam-quality,
optical system. The critical components responsible for long-coherence-length source that performs two func-
the performance capabilities of HRDL are the CW ref- tions—first as the receiver LO and second as a source
of photons for stabilizing the pulse laser via injection
TABLE 1. HRDL specifications. seeding—both of which are further described in the next
section. System parameters are listed in Table 1.
Parameter Value
Wavelength 2.0218 mm
Laser material Tm:Lu, YAG 1) THE LASERS
Laser pulse energy 0.8 mJ operationally (5 mJ demonstrated)
Laser pulse width 200 ns
Pulse repetition rate 200 Hz (i) Pump lasers: The laser diodes
Polarization Circular
Telescope diameter 0.2 m The HRDL solid-state pulse laser is optically CW
Detector InGaAs, room temperature pumped by semiconductor laser diodes. Although diode
Quantum efficiency 0.65 lasers are an alternative that can produce significant
Linear dynamic range 70 dB (entire system)
Range resolution 30 m amounts of optical power directly, the former config-
Maximum range 10.8 km (data-system limited) uration was chosen because diode lasers do not possess
Minimum range 350 m the spectral purity, beam quality, or high pulse energy
Scanner resolution 0.018 capabilities that are required for coherent Doppler lidar
Scanner acceleration rate 308 s22
operations. These qualities can be achieved by solid-

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MARCH 2001 GRUND ET AL.
state lasers, and diode-pumping enables efficient solid-
state laser operation.
In HRDL, the laser-diode light is used to pump energy
into the Tm:Lu, YAG solid-state laser crystal, which
can provide the required beam characteristics when
placed in a suitable Q-switched resonator cavity. The
CW diode pumping has several advantages over flash-
lamp and pulsed laser diode pumping. The diode lasers
produce light at 785 nm, which matches the absorption
band of Tm. Efficient absorption minimizes thermal gra-
dients and heat load at the laser head because a sub-
stantial fraction of the pump energy is radiated optically
in the laser output beam. The CW pumping allows the
laser to operate quasisteady-state, that is, without sig-
nificant time-varying thermal gradients. This improves
laser frequency stability and beam quality because it
induces less stress in the crystal than intermittent pump-
ing.
Each end of the HRDL, pulse-laser crystal is pumped
with ;9 W of light delivered by a 0.22-NA, 400-mm-
diameter optical fiber and coupled into the rod by a pair
of lenses. The pump energy for each fiber is generated
by five temperature-controlled 3-W laser diodes. In cou-
pling multiple lasers into a single fiber, brightness is
nearly preserved by lining up the laser sources along
the narrow divergence dimension while spatially over-
lapping the wide divergence dimension (Fan and San-
chez 1990). The module was built for us by Lightwave
Electronics. It performed well when delivered but has
systematically degraded in field service both electron-
ically and optically. It is currently being replaced with
fiber-coupled diode laser bars (Opto-Power Inc., OPC-
B015 785 FC).
(ii) The pulse laser cavity
The output coupler (95% reflectivity, 300-mm radius
of curvature) for the pulse-laser cavity is mounted on
a piezoelectric translator (PZT) to allow precision ad-
justment of the cavity length. An intracavity dichroic
beamsplitter is used to provide entry for the pump light
to the interior face of the laser crystal, forming an L-sha-
ped laser cavity. A fused-silica, intracavity acousto-op-
tic modulator (AOM; IntraAction AQS-1003AW19) is
used to Q-switch the pulse laser. The rear cavity end
mirror is coated onto the Tm:Lu, YAG laser rod. The
laser rod is wrapped in indium foil and secured within
a thermally contacted aluminum block that is temper-
ature controlled by a pair of Peltier coolers. Excess heat
is removed from the Peltier coolers and the AOM by a
low-volume, low-pressure water flow. This arrangement
minimizes thermal drifts due to environmental changes
and also eliminates frequency jitter caused by water
flow-induced cavity vibrations characteristic of direct
water cooled lasers.
Single-frequency operation of the pulse laser is
achieved by injection seeding. Injection-seeding is a
technique in which a pulse laser is locked to the fre-
381
quency of a CW laser by flooding the pulse laser cavity
with CW laser photons of the desired frequency prior
to pulse generation. Ideally, the length of the laser cavity
is adjusted to be resonant at the seed laser frequency so
that the frequency output of an injection-seeded laser is
identical to that of the injected photons. In HRDL, a
single temperature-stabilized CW reference laser (CLR
Photonics CLR-2) serves both as a frequency-shifted
beam for injection seeding and as the LO for coherent
detection. The frequency shift for seeding is required
because the LO and the transmitted frequencies are off-
set, as explained in the next paragraph. This reference
laser has operated nearly flawlessly since 1993 and has
maintained the same frequency within the resolution of
a Burleigh WA-10 wavemeter (10 pm), despite exposure
to vibration, accelerations, and temperature extremes as-
sociated with transport and field operations.
(iii) Reference laser and LO
In coherent Doppler lidar, unless the transmitted pulse
frequency is offset from the LO laser frequency, it is
hard to observe zero velocity (dc beat note), and it is
impossible to distinguish the sign of the measured u r
from the signal. By offsetting the transmitted pulse fre-
quency from the LO and observing whether the received
frequency is above or below the frequency of an oscil-
lator operating at the offset frequency, it is possible to
retrieve the sign of u r . This also reduces velocity mea-
surement biases because electronically, it facilitates very
flat system frequency response by translating the signal
frequency to a higher frequency where the signal band-
pass is a small fraction of the center frequency.
In HRDL, the diffracted beam path from the intra-
cavity AOM Q-switch is also used to inject the seed
light (Coherent Technologies, Inc. Boulder, personal
communication, 1993). In passing through the AOM,
the frequency of the seed light is shifted by 100 MHz,
providing the needed precision offset from the LO. Ad-
ditionally, generating a laser pulse requires that the
Q-switch be de-energized; this breaks the diffracted path
from the AOM, providing considerable isolation of the
LO laser from back-propagating pulse laser light. Iso-
lation in this path is critical to minimizing overload of
the signal detector and to the wavelength stability of the
LO laser, which is used as a frequency reference, during
reception of the atmospheric return. Additional isolation
in this path is provided by a conventional 30-dB Faraday
isolator.
(iv) Cavity length and the lock-loop system
For injection-seeding to work reliably, the cavity
length of the pulse laser must be actively maintained at
an integer multiple of a half wavelength of the injection
laser (i.e., optical resonance) to compensate for acoustic
vibrations and thermal drifts. In the HRDL pulse laser,
this resonance condition is initially sought by observing
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382 JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC TECHNOLOGY
and minimizing the time between when the Q-switch is
de-energized and when the laser pulse develops. This
is achieved by adjusting the pulse-laser cavity length,
using the output coupler PZT. When the cavity length
is correct, it is resonant with the injection laser fre-
quency (shifted by the 100-MHz AOM), and the pulse-
laser oscillation builds up from the already-present in-
jected seed photons rather than waiting for initiation by
a spontaneously emitted photon within the resonant
mode. When the resonance condition is met, the
Q-switch buildup time is a minimum (2–4 ms for the
HRDL laser). However, the magnitude of the buildup
time is not a unique indicator of seeded operation or
precise laser wavelength because it depends on laser
gain and cavity losses, which are sensitive to alignment,
pump intensity, temperature, and a myriad of other fac-
tors. The required precision control of the laser wave-
length is provided, once seeding is obtained, by mixing
a sample of the output pulse frequency with a sample
of the LO and observing the resulting pulse beat note
on a room-temperature InGaAs detector (Epitaxx ETX-
100GTR2.2). As pulse-laser oscillation begins, the op-
erating frequency quickly chirps to the cavity resonance
where the losses are least. Thus, small errors in the
cavity length may be observed as a difference of the
pulse beat note from 100 MHz. This error is fed back
to the PZT control to finetune the pulse-laser cavity
length.
Beat-note-frequency determination, Q-switch buildup
time measurement, and electronic control of the laser
lock loop are all implemented in a PC (originally a 486,
66 MHz) with a combination of commercial Industry-
Standard Architecture (ISA) D/A and timer cards and
a custom ISA frequency measurement and signal con-
ditioning card. Beat-frequency measurement is obtained
on each pulse by precisely timing (650 ps) the period
for 16 zero-crossings of the beat note. This provides a
single-pulse measurement precision of ;100 kHz and
a lock-loop range of 10–132 MHz (limited by amplifier
response and Advanced-Shotkey Transistor–Transistor
Logic).
The lock-loop PC runs real-time, interrupt-driven
software developed in-house under DOS. It provides the
ability to rapidly change laser and lock-loop operating
parameters by use of hierarchical menus and facilitates
monitoring laser function by generating a scrolling real-
time display of laser pulse energy, Q-switch buildup
time, pulse beat-note frequency, and PZT voltage on a
small black-and-white display. Histograms of the dis-
tributions of these parameters may also be displayed.
The latter function is invaluable in optimizing laser
alignment and lock-loop parameters and for diagnosing
laser health.
Since the currently implemented lock loop adjusts
cavity length for each pulse based on information from
previous pulses, the lock loop can easily correct for
thermal and low-frequency acoustic variations in the
cavity length but cannot correct for vibrations above
VOLUME 18
;100 Hz. In quiescent operation, the laser pulse-to-
pulse frequency standard deviation is observed to be
;1 MHz, probably due to higher frequency acoustic
vibrations. In rough seas during shipboard deployment,
the system was subjected to large-amplitude vibrations
due to the ship’s propellor and sea-induced 0.2–0.7-g
accelerations in all directions with a typical 4-s period.
Under these conditions, the laser solidly maintained lock
and exhibited ;2.5-MHz pulse-to-pulse jitter (17 ppb).
Subsequent signal processing compensates for this small
pulse-to-pulse jitter.
Planned operation in the National Center for Atmo-
spheric Research (NCAR) C-130 and the NOAA P-3
aircraft will likely require implementation of a more
sophisticated ramp-and-fire algorithm for the HRDL
lock loop. In this algorithm, the intensity of seed-laser
light back-propagating along the injection path is ob-
served while the PZT is ramped prior to Q-switching
the pulse laser. When the intensity of this light is a
maximum, the cavity is resonant with the seed light,
and the Q-switch is de-energized to generate a laser
pulse. This will allow tracking higher-frequency vibra-
tions because correction of the cavity length is based
on instantaneous information just prior to each laser
pulse. Software implementation of the lock loop in a
PC simplifies rapid adaptation and testing of new al-
gorithms and facilitates fine tuning algorithms for best
performance
(v) Performance
Although the injection-seeded laser was designed to
develop 10-mJ, 200-ns-wide pulses, optical coating
damage has limited its performance to ,5 mJ per pulse
at 200 Hz PRR. In practical field operation prior to 1999,
only 0.8–1.0 mJ pulse21 could be reliably maintained.
The problem is largely due to thermal lensing and sub-
sequent narrowing of the laser mode diameter in the
crystal by the pump beam. This causes excessively high
fluence at the rod face resulting in optical coating dam-
age. When the pump module was new, the laser devel-
oped 1.2 mJ pulse21 in 300-ns-wide pulses (injection
seeded) at a 1-kHz pulse rate; however, the present
HRDL data system cannot handle pulse rates greater
than ;230 Hz. Both the laser and data system are cur-
rently being modified to alleviate the pulse energy and
PRR restrictions. For example, Wulfmeyer and Brewer
(personal communication, 2000) have reported that re-
cent improvements have increased transmitted pulse en-
ergy to 3 mJ pulse21 .
2) TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER SYSTEMS
The receiver and transmitter share a single 0.2-m-
diameter off-axis Mersenne telescope. This provides ad-
vantages in alignment, cost, and performance but re-
quires separation of the receive light from the transmit
path before detection. This is achieved by passing the
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MARCH 2001 GRUND ET AL. 383

linearly polarized beam from the pulse laser through a

polarization beam splitter; the beam is then converted
to circular polarization by a quarter-wave plate (QWP)
before entering the telescope for transmission to the
atmosphere. Backscatter from symmetric scatterers in
the atmosphere reflect this polarization, and it returns
with the opposite circular polarization as viewed by the
receiver. After collection by the telescope, the return
signal again passes through the QWP and is converted
to the orthogonal linear polarization, which is reflected
out of the transmit path by the polarization beam-splitter
cube. The separated collimated received beam is di-
rected to the room-temperature InGaAs signal detector
(Eitaxx ETX-100GTR2.2) through a 10% reflectivity
beam splitter and focusing lens. The LO beam is coal-
igned with the receive beam and is reflected into the
detector from this beam splitter. Efficient signal detec-
tion requires that the LO and receive beams match po-
sition, direction, polarization, and wavefront curvature
on this beam splitter, where coherent mixing takes place.
A beam expander is inserted into the LO path ahead of
the mixing beam splitter to achieve matching of the
diameter and wavefront curvature (focus) of the LO to
the receive beam from the telescope.
Alignment and matching of the receiver and LO paths
in coherent systems is usually difficult, but the proce-
dure we use, employing a shear plate interferometer, FIG. 4. Signal conditioning and processing block diagram for
HRDL.
makes this relatively simple. A high-quality plane mir-
ror is inserted between the QWP and the telescope and
adjusted to retroreflect the pulse laser back on itself. coherent detection system to ensure that the SNR is
This mirror simulates the atmospheric return. The re- dominated by the optical signal statistics rather than
troreflected beam is viewed using the reflection from a detector and electronic amplifier noise. The LO power
shear plate, inserted ahead of the detector lens, with a is typically set to achieve ;12 dB of signal detector
charge-coupled device (CCD) IR camera (with the lens shot noise. The advantage of operating the detector in
removed or defocused from infinity and a neutral-den- the PV mode is that it is simpler, it avoids noise injection
sity filter to prevent damaging the CCD). Alternately through the bias circuits, and the detector can be con-
blocking the LO or the receive path allows matching nected directly to the amplifier input with a minimum
the position of the two beams and, by matching the of lead length.
relative rotation of the shear plate fringes, allows match- Initially, the data system is electronically switched to
ing the wavefront curvatures as well. look at the outgoing-pulse beat-note detector. After each
pulse is transmitted, the data system input is switched
to the signal detector. In this way, a sample of the out-
c. Signal processing and data system going-pulse frequency signal is subjected to the same
1) SIGNAL CONDITIONING signal path as the atmospheric signal and is available
as a reference for subsequent signal-processing steps to
Figure 4 shows an outline of the HRDL data acqui- perform pulse-by-pulse frequency corrections. These
sition system. In contrast to conventional technique, the processing corrections are necessary because the pulse-
InGaAs detectors used are operated without bias and in to-pulse frequency jitter of the laser is ;1 MHz (equiv-
the photovoltaic (PV) mode. Direct current generated alent to ;1 m s21 at 2 mm), and the velocity performance
by the LO power on the detectors is shunted through goal requires ;0.1 m s21 measurement precision.
an inductor, and the high-frequency signal is directly The HRDL velocity measurement range is currently
input to an off-the-shelf, low-noise, 32-dB power gain 625 m s21 ; thus the data system must unambiguously
voltage amplifier (Amplifonix BX6535-4). The response resolve frequencies of 75–125 MHz. Digitization at the
of this combination appears flat across the 100 6 50 Nyquist rate of 250 megasamples per second (Ms s21 )
MHz needed for HRDL, and 18 dB of shot noise (ratio 12 bits deep is not feasible with current technology and
of noise power with LO to noise power without LO on would result in unnecessarily high data rates and pro-
the detector) can be achieved within the detector linear cessing requirements. Instead, a complex demodulator
range. Shot noise .10 dB is typically required in a approach is employed in which the detector signals are

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384 JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC TECHNOLOGY
mixed with a low-phase-noise electronic oscillator
(Electronic Research EROS-800-NAA-2) operating at
100 MHz. This converts the Doppler signal to the 0–25
MHz range (baseband). A second version of the base-
band signal is simultaneously produced by mixing the
detector signal with the oscillator output that has been
phase shifted by 908 (quadrature). The in-phase (I) and
quadrature (Q) versions of the signal contain the same
basic frequency information, but the relative I–Q phase
additionally indicates the sign of the velocity. The input
signal to the I–Q demodulator (Mini-Circuits ZFMIQ-
100D-2) is low-pass filtered to eliminate noise occurring
at the third and fifth harmonics of the oscillator because
these harmonics also appear in the baseband as artifacts
of the mixing process and would degrade SNR perfor-
mance by ;3 dB. The I and Q signals output from the
complex demodulator are low-passed to prevent aliasing
of frequencies greater than 25 MHz and buffered (AD
9610) to present a constant impedance load to the LP
filters and to drive the 5-m-long cables to the data ac-
quisition system.
2) DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM
The data acquisition system, shown in Fig. 4, employs
a VME bus architecture. The main controller is a
FORCE 68040 card with 16 MB of memory. This CPU
is diskless and boots the VxWorks real-time operating
system from a Sun IPX workstation. Raw I and Q signals
from the complex demodulator are digitized at 50 Ms
s21 with an 11-bit SAM-70 card from Lassen Research;
the digitizer is directly interfaced to the first of three
Arial Hydra digital signal processor (DSP) boards. Each
Hydra card contains four 40-MHz TI TMS320C40 DSP
chips, dedicated fast memory for each chip, and 1 MB
of DRAM mapped into VME memory. Other VME
cards are present for interfacing with the scanner and
other digital and analog inputs. Ancillary data from the
ship-motion-compensation systems and the laser-control
computer are brought in through the serial ports on the
68040 card.
A total of 12 C40 DSP’s comprise the system. One
DSP is used for ingesting the data from the digitizer
and distributing it to the other DSPs using the high-
speed serial ports. A second DSP is used to calculate
the frequency of the pulse-laser beat-note frequency por-
tion of the signal. This reference frequency is passed
along with the data to the other 10 DSPs. The current
system digitizes 3600 complex samples, which, at 50
Ms s21 , provides a maximum profile range of 10.8 km.
Each of the 10 processing DSPs receives 360 samples
and calculates covariances and moments for 36 contig-
uous 30-m gates using the poly-pulse-pair estimator.
Thus, each card processes data for a range interval of
1.08 km. The data-processing algorithm is described in
more detail later in this section. When the processing
of a beam is complete, a VME interrupt is raised to
signal to the data-processing system that moment and
VOLUME 18
covariance data are available. In response, the data-pro-
cessing software running on the 68040 card assembles
header information with the moment and covariance
data from the DSPs and immediately transmits each data
record via ethernet to the Sun IPX. Additionally, the
processing software assembles and transmits an initial
file header and once-per-second ancillary data records.
Data-processing and scan parameters are selected by
the operator from a command menu on the Sun IPX
workstation and are transmitted to the 68040 processor
via an ethernet socket connection. The 68040 processing
software then issues scanner commands via a parallel
port to the scanner computer and updates the DRAM
with new processing parameters.
Software on the Sun workstation reads the records
from the ethernet socket into shared memory. From
shared memory, records are written to a 4-mm DAT
tape archive and made available to the display programs.
Display programs can be run on the local workstation
or remotely on any terminal running an X-window sys-
tem.
The command menu and data displays were created
using a commercial X-window-based graphical user in-
terface (GUI) builder and the C programming language.
The data displays include an A-scope, a range-time in-
dicator (RTI), a plan-position indicator (PPI), a range-
height indicator (RHI), and a status window. Intensity,
u r , and normalized coherent power (NCP; a signal qual-
ity index) data can be independently displayed in each
display window. Multiple displays of the same type can
be used simultaneously. Displays use color scales to
depict the data and can be thresholded using the NCP
field. This threshold technique removes data with poor
velocity estimates.
Coherent Doppler lidars produce copious amounts of
data. At a 50-MHz digitization rate, 200-Hz PRR, and
10-km profile length, HRDL generates ;2.5 MB s21 (9
GB h21 ) of raw digitized I and Q data, presenting a
formidable recording and data processing task. Reduced
to intensities and velocities with 30-m resolution and
1-s (200 shots) averaged beam resolution, the data rate
is a more manageable 1.25 kB s21 (4.5 MB h21 ). This
is the primary motivation for developing a real-time
processor and recording only the moment and complex
covariance data. The availability of real-time velocities
and intensities also facilitates immediate display of the
data needed for system optimization, data quality as-
surance, and field-experiment management. The draw-
back of failing to record raw data is that the complicated
real-time processing algorithm must be correct or the
recorded data would be irretrievably corrupted.
The algorithm used to reduce the raw I and Q data
to velocities and intensities is outlined in Fig. 5. It is
important to recognize the distinction between radar and
lidar Doppler signals. Radar Doppler shift at each range
is estimated from signal phase changes between differ-
ent radar pulses. At the much shorter lidar wavelengths,
the phase of the signal must be estimated from succes-
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MARCH 2001 GRUND ET AL. 385

sive samples of the return from each pulse because the

decorrelation time of the atmosphere is so short (Gos-
sard and Strauch 1983).
For each laser pulse and ensuing atmospheric profile,
a 7-lag autocovariance function (ACF) is calculated for
each range bin. This is also done separately for the
outgoing pulse frequency monitor beat-note signal. The
ACF for each range gate is rotated to compensate for
the pulse frequency error on each pulse. Next, the ACF
of a noise sample (acquired prior to atmospheric data
acquisition or from range gates where no signal return
is expected) is subtracted from each range ACF. This
takes account of amplifier noise floor irregularities, filter
roll-off, and other system bandpass characteristics that
may cause velocity bias by inducing a detection sen-
sitivity dependence on frequency. The corrected ACF
profiles are then averaged together until the SNR re-
quirements for the needed velocity resolution are sat-
isfied, typically ;0.1–2.0 s for boundary layer data but
less for higher-backscatter targets such as clouds. An
FFT is performed on the averaged ACFs at each range
to produce the power spectrum. The peak of a quadratic
fit to the maximum value of the spectrum and the two
adjacent points yields the best estimate of the frequency.
The peak-fitting step produces higher resolution in the
estimates than the discrete resolution of the FFT. This FIG. 5. Signal processing algorithm for HRDL.
technique works well; the data presented in section
3a(2), however, were limited by resolution of the data-
recording system to 17 cm s21 for an individual shot. standard tractor. The trailer has been modified with air-
The data system has been subsequently upgraded to ride suspension to further reduce road shock.
eliminate this digitization effect. The inside of the container has been partitioned to
house the lidar transceiver in one half and the data-
acquisition system and spare equipment or crew inci-
d. Mechanical considerations and operating dental storage in the other half. The container is insu-
environment lated to R-21, and each section is separately heated and
cooled.
An important consideration in the design of HRDL Since the lidar is used during marine research mis-
was the ability to operate either in stationary mode or sions aboard a research ship, adequate dehumidification
in a number of mobile configurations. For example, the and filtering of the air is required. Also, because the
first significant deployment of HRDL was aboard a re- lidar transceiver path exits the seatainer through a 20.3-
search ship at sea, and many design decisions were made cm (8-in.) opening in the roof, slight positive pressure
anticipating the installation of HRDL on board an air- is maintained inside the container to minimize entry of
craft for airborne operation. salt particles and sea spray. Positive pressure is main-
During land or marine deployments, the entire system tained by a specially designed system that provides a
is housed in a modified intermodal shipping container continuous in-flow of ;7.5 m 3 s21 of filtered and de-
(seatainer). The seatainer was chosen for the ease, econ- humidified outside air.
omy, and flexibility of shipping by truck, rail, or ship. In anticipation of aircraft deployments, the HRDL
The door, windows, air filtration–dehumidification unit, transceiver was assembled on a flight-certified mounting
and air conditioners are all recessed from the exterior platform obtained from the NOAA P-3 aircraft opera-
dimensions of the container and can be covered with tions center in Florida. This mounting platform attaches
protective plates during shipping. Cost savings in long- to the floor of the P-3 and measures 0.6 m 3 1.2 m.
distance and overseas shipping are facilitated because
the structural integrity and dimensions of the standard
e. Scanning
container were preserved during modification. When in
transit, the lidar and data system are floated on per- While vertical stares provide valuable information on
manently attached air vibration isolators to reduce pack- profiles of vertical velocity w and backscatter distri-
ing cost and time. For domestic deployments, the sea- bution in the ABL and in clouds, scanning a coherent
tainer is placed on a trailer that may be hauled by a Doppler lidar adds significant measurement capabilities.

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386 JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 18

HRDL employs a friction-drive, three-axis, alt-azimuth

scanner with a 0.22-m clear aperture capable of 0.028
precision and acceleration exceeding 308 s22 (DFM En-
gineering). The scanner controller allows downloading
of scanning program tables from the data-system inter-
face. In operation, a scan sequence is downloaded to
the scanner computer from the HRDL data system, and
the scanner independently executes the scan sequence
until it is complete. The scanner position is updated at
a 100-Hz rate via a parallel port connection to the data-
system computer.

1) TYPES OF SCAN

In addition to stares at any combination of azimuth

and elevation angles, several basic types of scan may
be executed with this system. Scans performed by
sweeping the azimuth angle while holding the elevation
angle fixed are referred to in radar terms as PPI scans.
At low elevation angles, they provide nearly horizontal
scans that reveal the horizontal u r or aerosol structure
of the atmosphere near the surface. At higher elevation
angles, full 3608 PPI’s describe a cone of measurements
of u r . The u r measurements can be used to obtain vertical
profiles of the horizontal wind, using the velocity-azi-
muth display (VAD) technique described by Browning
and Wexler (1968). The VAD scans can also be used
to estimate vertical profiles of turbulence quantities,
such as TKE, momentum flux, and TKE divergence
(Frisch et al. 1989, 1992; Eberhard et al. 1989; Orr
1990), by calculating functions of the turbulent fluc-
tuations of u r about a best sine-wave fit (representing
the mean wind) at each level from the whole 3608 scan.
Vertical-slice scans, performed by holding the azi-
muth angle fixed while sweeping the elevation angle,
are called RHI scans in radar terms. They provide ver-
tical cross sections of the u r and intensity fields. At low
elevation angles, the vertical resolution in RHI scans of
u r , which closely approximates the horizontal wind
component, is limited only by the lidar beam width
(;0.2 m) and the resolution of the scanner. Thus, ver-
tical resolutions of ,1 m are hypothetically possible at
sufficiently slow scanning speeds. Because the lidar is
unaffected by antenna side lobes, it is possible to mea-
sure wind profiles very close to the surface and to other
obstacles.
2) MOTION COMPENSATION SYSTEM
The initial field deployment aboard a research ship
required the scanner to be compensated for ship attitude.
For this purpose, an actuator producing 6158 of tilt of
the elevation mirror was added to the scanner to avoid
the azimuthal ambiguity at the pole inherent to alt-az-
imuth scanners. When near-vertical operations are re-
quired, only the tilt and elevation controls are used to
compensate for ship pitch and roll.
Figure 6 shows a block diagram of the HRDL position
FIG. 6. Scanner control and attitude correction subsystem for
HRDL.
and attitude measurement system and scanner attitude
correction control system. A three-axis, solid-state, rate-
sensor package (Systron-Donner MP-GccABBB-100
Motion Pak) is used to measure rotation rates in the
moving frame. The analog outputs of the rate sensors
are input to a commercial A/D card in a PC (originally
a 75-MHz Pentium) dedicated to the attitude measure-
ment and control function.
These sensors provide relative attitude measurement
updates at ;100 Hz; however, absolute attitude must
be set, and drifts in these sensors must be removed. This
is accomplished in two ways. When a sufficient number
of satellites are in view and acquired, primary correc-
tions are provided at 0.5-s intervals by a four-channel
differential global positioning system (GPS) attitude re-
ceiver (Ashtech 3DF-ADU). The four antennas are
mounted to the HRDL seatainer in a pattern measuring
3 m 3 6 m, providing ;0.158 attitude measurement
accuracy. Running averages over several minutes from
both the rate-sensor- and the GPS-derived positions are
compared continuously, and drift rates for the sensors
are updated and used to zero the rate-sensor-derived
attitude errors. In our field experience, the GPS infor-
mation cannot be used alone because the GPS differ-
ential signals are available only ;70% of the time, and
the attitude update rate of the GPS receiver is much too
slow (ship pitch, roll, and yaw periods were ;4 s on
the R/V Wecoma). We believe loss of GPS lock was
due to satellite blockage by the ship’s mast during ma-

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MARCH 2001 GRUND ET AL.
neuvers. Thus, the rate sensors are used to provide the
high-speed updates while the GPS data provide the ab-
solute accuracy needed.
When GPS attitude data are not available, a second
method for correcting pitch and roll errors is used. The
attitude measurement package also includes a precision
three-axis accelerometer set. In the absence of system-
atic ship manuevers, the accelerometers may be inte-
grated to determine absolute vertical with respect to the
sensor axes from the residual fraction of g in each axis.
Because the rate sensors are physically contained in the
same package, drift rates and corrections for the attitude
sensors may be estimated in the same way that they are
for the GPS data. This method appears to work to ;0.58
accuracy. A precision magnetometer has recently been
acquired and will similarly be incorporated into the sys-
tem to provide yaw calibration when the GPS is un-
available.
At a 10-Hz rate, the attitude information is sent via
a high-speed serial port to the scanner control computer.
The scanner computer then corrects the desired scanner
pointing direction (given in ship coordinates) to the
earth coordinate frame defined by the attitude infor-
mation. First and second derivatives of the received at-
titude information are calculated by the scanner com-
puter and used to enhance scanner response.
The GPS position, calibrated attitude data, ship co-
ordinate acceleration data, and ship coordinate velocity
are formatted and sent to the HRDL data system for
recording with the atmospheric profile data. The ship’s
velocity data are used in postprocessing to subtract the
platform motion from the lidar u r data.
Precision of the scanning corrections has not yet been
established. A three-axis ship-simulating test frame has
been built and is being used to evaluate system perfor-
mance.
3. Field performance
a. Boundary layer
1) MARINE BOUNDARY LAYER
HRDL was first fielded during the Marine Boundary
Layer Experiment (MBLEX95) in April–May 1995. The
experiment was designed to study the formation of co-
herent structures in the ocean and atmospheric boundary
layers and the effects of turbulence coherent structures
on air–sea interactions (Geernaert et al. 1996). During
MBLEX95, HRDL was operated from the deck of the
Oregon State University oceanographic R/V Wecoma.
It performed a complete array of scanning and vertical-
staring operations. This is believed to be the first op-
eration of an atmospheric coherent lidar at sea. Inco-
herent (non-Doppler) systems have been successfully
employed aboard ship, such as the lidar operated by
Hooper et al. (1996) to study vortex shedding by an
isolated obstacle.
Problems with synchronization of parallel processing
387
by the DSPs during MBLEX95 frequently caused cor-
ruption of the data beyond 1.08 km. Nonetheless, we
were on many occasions able to retrieve solid signal to
a range of 5 km. From the high quality data obtained
between 0.4 and 1.08 km, we were able to ascertain that
under typical marine boundary layer aerosol conditions,
with 0.8 mJ per pulse and averaging 20 pulses (0.1 s),
we could expect 6 cm s21 velocity resolution in 30-m
range gates (Grund 1997a). Unexpectedly, dense fog
penetration to ;3 km was also observed at the HRDL
wavelength.
While aboard the R/V Wecoma, a 55.8-m (183-foot)
vessel, HRDL was variously subjected to large accel-
erations (;0.7 g in all directions) and large-amplitude,
;5-Hz vibration from the ship’s propellor. Stable op-
eration of the laser lock loop was obtained despite these
extreme vibration and acceleration conditions. The
pulse-to-pulse laser frequency jitter was observed to be
;2.5 MHz (17 ppb), well within the pulse-frequency-
compensation bandwidth of the processor.
More recently, HRDL has been deployed to cruises
in the tropical western Pacific Ocean during June–July
1999 and off the Bahama Islands in April 2000. The
Pacific cruise included operations enroute from Darwin,
Australia, to the Island of Nauru. The measurements
near Nauru were to assess the representativeness of pro-
file measurements taken on the island to oceanic pro-
files. For each successive cruise, both the lidar and the
motion compensation system have undergone signifi-
cant improvements.
2) CONTINENTAL BOUNDARY LAYER
In July and August 1996, HRDL was deployed to the
Illinois prairie to study the daytime CBL over the level
terrain as a part of the Lidars in Flat Terrain (LIFT)
experiment (Mayor et al. 1997b). HRDL goals at LIFT
included testing the system’s ability to acquire a com-
prehensive dataset on the statistics of w in the CBL
(Mayor et al. 1997c; Lenschow et al. 2000), to measure
vertical profiles of TKE and momentum flux (Banta et
al. 1997b), and to contribute to measurements of flux
profiles of heat, moisture, and ozone (Senff et al. 1996,
1997).
During LIFT, more than 220 h of HRDL data were
acquired, split about equally between 1) vertically point-
ing and 2) RHI, PPI, and profiler-beam following scans.
Daytime CBL observations were heavily weighted to-
ward vertical stares. Analysis of this dataset is in pro-
gress, and preliminary results have been reported else-
where (Banta et al. 1997b; Grund 1997b; Weckworth et
al. 1997; Mayor et al. 1997b,c; Senff et al. 1997; Cohn
et al. 1997).
In Fig. 7a, a 1-h segment of typical w data is presented
in time–height format (RTI display). Updrafts are in-
dicated as warm colors and downdrafts as cool colors.
Maximum updraft speeds exceeded 3 m s21 during this
period (updrafts exceeding 5 m s21 were observed dur-
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388 JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC TECHNOLOGY
FIG. 7. Range-time display of vertical beam data showing the typ-
ical afternoon CBL structure observed during LIFT. Times are in
UTC (CST 5 UTC 2 5 h). The top panel shows vertical velocities:
positive velocities are up. The bottom panel shows backscatter in-
tensity on a log scale. Boundary layer cumuli, with cloud base near
1.3 km AGL, block the signals above ;1.5 km at about 1930, 1950,
and 2020 UTC. Note that each cloud forms above an updraft region
that extends throughout the observed boundary layer.
ing LIFT); downdraft velocities typically reached 1–2
m s21 and covered a larger segment of time and space.
Figure 7b shows the corresponding relative backscatter
intensity profile on a log scale. The lifting condensation
level was 1.3 km above ground level (AGL), as indi-
cated by the sharp rise in backscatter entering the cu-
mulus (Cu) clouds. The Cu sat atop the convective
plumes of the boundary layer. Although not evident dur-
ing this time period, virga could usually be distinguished
from cloud and aerosol signals by an organized anom-
alous increase in negative w coincident with a substan-
tial increase in backscatter. About 250 m of penetration
into these dense water clouds was achieved before the
signal fell below detection limit due to extinction. Thus,
beyond the cloud base, the w information abruptly ended
at ;1.55 km AGL. Above the entrainment zone, the
signal dropped off gradually because the air in the free
troposphere was cleaner than that of the boundary layer.
Above 2.4 km AGL, the signal was insufficient on this
day to acquire velocity profiles except in mid- and high-
level clouds, when present.
In addition to vertical staring to measure w profiles
and statistics, sector scans (PPIs and RHIs) provided
images of ABL features and processes. A 18-elevation-
angle azimuth scan (PPI) covering 3608 is shown in Fig.
VOLUME 18
FIG. 8. A 18-elevation scan in azimuth (PPI) taken at 0858 CST
on 12 Aug 1996, during the early-morning development of a CBL.
Radial velocities as a function of azimuth angle centered on the lidar
are shown. The turbulent wake behind trees and buildings (0 m s21
velocity patches) is apparent in the southwest quadrant. Linearly or-
ganized coherent structures aligned with the wind are suggested by
the periodic modulation of the velocities.
8. The mean flow near the surface was from the south-
southwest, and several interesting features of ABL
structure can be observed in this type of scanning data,
which were acquired at 0800 central standard time
(CST) near the beginning of the diurnal solar heating
cycle. At this early stage in boundary layer develop-
ment, the thermals appear organized in linear bands
(perhaps rolls) oriented along the mean wind direction.
This is most easily seen in the systematic meanders of
the 0 m s21 (white) velocity contour. Variations in drag
due to surface features can also be seen clearly as a
velocity wake behind obstacles, such as trees and build-
ings (white 0 m s21 velocity patches).
A particularly valuable attribute of the lidar is its
ability to observe the velocity field, including the effects
of obstructions very near the surface, because the beam
is well confined and free of sidelobe response. By scan-
ning the elevation angle at a fixed azimuth oriented to
the mean wind, it is possible to observe the fine vertical
structure of the horizontal wind near the surface. Figure
9, demonstrating the capabilities of HRDL when in ver-
tical scanning mode, shows a sampling of three vertical
slices taken along the mean wind direction just prior to
the PPI in Fig. 8 (many more were acquired at about
1.5-min intervals during this time period). The top pan-
el, taken at 0527 CST before the onset of diurnal heat-
ing, shows a well-developed nocturnal low level jet
(LLJ) with a maximum speed of 9.1 m s 21 at 160 m
altitude. Similar jets were observed on several mornings
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MARCH 2001 GRUND ET AL.
FIG. 9. Vertical-slice (RHI) scans along the mean wind direction
taken downwind during the morning transition between the nocturnal
stable ABL and the daytime CBL on 12 Aug 1996. Blue crosses are
at 100-m intervals in altitude and in range (top) early morning (0627
CST) nocturnal jet. Jet maximum at 160 m AGL was 9.1 m s21 . Note
the near laminar stratification. Middle: at 0807 CST, convection driv-
en by surface heating was just beginning, as evidenced by the low-
velocity plumes at ; 100 m AGL near 750 m and 1 km down range.
This plume activity was eroding the jet from below. (bottom) By
0854 CST, convective plumes have grown to ;200-m height. The
plumes (;1.25 and 2.2 km down range) have completely eroded the
jet and down-mixed the jet momentum, accelerating the mean BL
flow to 25 m s21 . These scans were taken just prior to the PPI in
Fig. 8.
during LIFT, with core speeds of 5–12 m s21 , spanning
only 20–75 m at altitudes of 30–200 m, somewhat near-
er the ground than suggested by previous climatologies
(Hoecker 1963; Blackadar 1957) and often below the
minimum altitude for standard wind profilers. The LLJs
at various scales are meteorologically and climatolog-
ically significant because they strongly influence heat
and moisture transport, can enhance thunderstorm ac-
tivity through transport of moisture and momentum
(Stensrud 1996), may affect radiative balance through
impacts on cloud formation, and have important impli-
cations for pollution transport. The middle and bottom
panels of Fig. 9 show two stages in the evolution of the
CBL from the stable nocturnal boundary layer, the
breakup process of this jet, and the mixing of jet mo-
mentum into the growing CBL after sunrise.
Movie loops of the RHIs, taken every few minutes
throughout this time period, suggest early convective
plume genesis may be tied to surface features, and pe-
riodic surges in the nocturnal jet may be tied to wave
generation in the stable layers near the surface.
More recently, HRDL was a key instrument in the
Cooperative Atmosphere–Surface Exchange Study pro-
ject in October 1999 (CASES-99) to study the nocturnal
stable boundary layer. It produced dramatic scan-images
389
FIG. 10. Range-time display of vertical beam data showing a cirrus
cloud as it advects overhead. The w structure is shown in the top
panel; the backscatter intensity is shown in the lower panel on a log
scale. The top of the cloud layer shows the upward motion associated
with active generating cells. The remainder of the cloud is composed
of ice virga.
of gravity waves, turbulence structures, and low-level
jet evolution. These scan data have also been animated
to enhance the ability to interpret the lidar images as
well as the other data taken during the project. The
spatial and temporal resolution possible with HRDL al-
lowed these features to be displayed in fine detail, and
analysis of this dataset is in progress.
b. Clouds
The study of cloud morphology and dynamics is an-
other important meteorological application for HRDL.
Clouds are potent modulators of climate, and a more
complete understanding of cloud formation and dissi-
pation mechanisms and cloud morphology is needed to
assess the impact of clouds on radiative balance and to
parameterize cloud effects in climate models. The high
spatial and velocity resolution of HRDL offer new ca-
pabilities for studying cloud dynamics in unprecedented
detail.
An example of a cirrus cloud observed by HRDL
during vertically pointing operations is shown in Fig.
10. In this mode, the cloud is advected over the lidar
by ambient winds, and to the extent Taylor’s hypothesis
holds, the data represent a time–height cross section
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390 JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC TECHNOLOGY
through the cloud along the mean wind. The top panel
shows the cloud velocity structure, clearly delineating
the active generating cells near cloud top from the fall-
ing ice-crystal virga beneath. The lower panel shows
the corresponding relative backscatter intensity on a log
scale. It is interesting to note that the generating regions
of strongest backscatter (i.e., greatest cloud density,
2156–2203 UTC) have weaker upward velocity than the
relatively less dense generating regions do. This pattern
is common in the limited cirrus dataset thus far ex-
amined. A possible explanation is that the well-devel-
oped generating cells have depleted the local water va-
por concentration through precipitation and are no lon-
ger actively driven by latent heat release. The apparent
increased backscatter from precipitation, with associated
enhanced fall speeds beneath these cells, supports this
notion and suggests further study.
HRDL can penetrate many kilometers of transmissive
clouds such as cirrus (Ci), altostratus (As), and alto-
cumulus (Ac), giving details of cloud velocity and back-
scatter structure. Although radars are capable of greater
penetration in dense clouds, radar signals are also
weighted toward larger particles and precipitation when
present, and recent measurements suggest even highly
sensitive radars may miss, for instance, the radiatively
important, small-particle, supercooled-water-droplet
clouds that frequently form the generating cells atop
arctic stratus (Harrington et al. 1997) and other cirrus
clouds. With planned improvements in the HRDL laser
pulse energy, it will likely be possible to observe the
velocity in the environment surrounding clouds from
returns from the background aerosol. In that case, a
complete picture of the cloud dynamical environment
can be constructed.
c. Performance evaluation
Near turnkey performance was achieved from HRDL
during LIFT. The final week of the experiment was car-
ried out without the presence of a technically trained
operator and provided excellent data quality. This ex-
perience suggests the feasibility of near-unattended op-
erations after initial deployment and setup, significantly
lowering the cost of lengthy field campaigns requiring
Doppler lidar. Improvements and upgrades to the system
have produced even more robust performance during
the more recent deployments.
Systematic calibration of HRDL intensity measure-
ments and validation velocity measurements are in pro-
gress and will be reported at a later date. Initial inter-
comparison of w data from HRDL with that from the
collocated wind profiler shows excellent agreement
within 0.4 m s21 except in rapidly changing periods,
when the longer profiler averaging time is important. A
more careful study accounting for the effect of differ-
ences in temporal and spatial sampling is under way.
At present, reasonable estimates of HRDL perfor-
mance can be obtained from analysis of the data in hand.
VOLUME 18
FIG. 11. Comparison of the velocity precision of HRDL (X, M, *)
with the theoretical Cramer–Rao lower bound (CRLB), from the for-
mula of Porat and Friedlander (1986). The X’s are from altostratus
cloud returns near 4-km range, m is from MBLEX95, m are from
LIFT CBL w data. The m was estimated from w data contours (Grund
1997a); X and m were estimated from the difference between the
zeroth and first lag of the autocovariance of time series of the w
profiles at a fixed range (Mayor et al. 1997a).
Figure 11 summarizes the velocity precision observed
from HRDL data as a function of estimated wideband
SNR. Also plotted is the CRLB (Porat and Friedlander
1986; Frehlich 1993; Rye and Hardesty 1993a,b) on the
velocity precision expected for the lidar operating con-
ditions. How closely a particular lidar achieves the
CRLB is a function of 1) the hardware performance
(such as transmit laser frequency chirp, spectral purity
of the LO, and spectral noise content of the electronics),
2) the signal processing algorithm and its implemen-
tation, and 3) inhomogeneities in the wind field due to
turbulence over the range gate (Frehlich 1997; Frehlich
et al. 1997). As can be seen, HRDL operates close to
the theoretical limit in both high and low SNR condi-
tions. The LIFT velocities were inadvertently recorded
in 8-bit format, which introduced an artificial 0.17-m
s21 digitization of the data. This situation has been cor-
rected but introduces a ;6-cm s21 uncertainty of its own
in the velocity precision used in the present analysis.
Frequency chirp effects in the pulse laser are believed
to be small. This can be seen clearly in the top panel
of Fig. 7; within the region between cloud base (1.3 km
AGL) and signal extinction (1.55 km AGL), the velocity
structure shows no systematic shift indicative of chirp.
An analysis of the signal from one of the hard-target
(building) returns shown in Fig. 8 has also been care-
fully examined. The fraction of total target return energy
per 200 ns is plotted in Fig. 12 as a function of velocity
retrieved in 200-ns range gates. As can be seen, within
the 0.17-m s21 velocity resolution and 30-m range res-
olution available from the recorded data, nearly all the
pulse energy is chirp free. The energy-weighted velocity
error caused by the observed chirp on this hard target
is estimated to be 27 mm s21 . The effect of this chirp
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MARCH 2001 GRUND ET AL.
FIG. 12. Comparison of the fraction of total returned energy from
a hard target per 200-ns interval, with the indicated frequency (ve-
locity) of the hard target in the same 200-ns interval, to estimate the
effects of pulse frequency chirp on Doppler accuracy. A relatively
small portion of the pulse energy is generated in the extended chirped
tail of the pulse. The error due to chirp from a distributed target is
expected to be similar to the energy-weighted mean-chirp error from
a hard target, about 27 mm s21 .
on atmospheric measurements depends on the range de-
rivative of backscatter and is insignificant for all but the
most extreme gradients.
4. Summary and conclusions
A high-resolution Doppler lidar (HRDL), which is
based on a solid-state laser and was designed for at-
mospheric research, has been constructed and demon-
strated on land and at sea. Field performance suggests
that 30-m range resolution has been achieved with si-
multaneous velocity precision of ;10 cm s21 (deter-
minations of precisions ranging from 6 to 30 cm s21
were documented, depending on aerosol backscatter
conditions and lidar operating parameters). The HRDL
represents a unique and significant new technology
available for ABL and cloud research. The ability to
observe the atmospheric velocity field with this un-
precedented resolution will enable continued rapid pro-
gress in the development and testing of large-eddy sim-
ulation (LES) models and will provide new insights into
ABL processes and cloud dynamics. In particular, when
HRDL is teamed with water vapor, ozone, or other spe-
cies-measuring, range-resolved remote sensors, direct
measurement of vertical profiles of high-quality fluxes
through the boundary layer by eddy correlation is pos-
sible. The feasibility of simultaneously acquiring Dopp-
ler and water-vapor concentrations using the DIAL tech-
nique has been favorably evaluated (Grund et al. 1996)
391
and was more recently demonstrated by Senff et al.
(1996) and Wulfmeyer (1999) using w from a radar wind
profiler instead of a Doppler lidar.
A salient feature of HRDL is its ability to resolve
finescale velocity structure over a range of several ki-
lometers in the vicinity of obstacles and near the ground.
This is particularly important to studies of the stable
boundary layer and for determining surface roughness
effects. The stability of the instrument over many hours
allows for sufficient sample size to estimate high-order
moments of velocity distributions.
Planned technology improvements in the pulse laser
and signal processing system will provide increased
range performance, better approximation of the CRLB
on velocity precision at low SNR, and higher PRR lead-
ing to higher temporal resolution while preserving the
range and velocity of the present system. Systematic
validation of velocity measurement precision by self-
consistent statistical analysis and by intercomparison
with collocated wind profiler data from LIFT is in pro-
gress, although the performance stated here is believed
to be indicative of the true system performance. Inten-
sity calibration techniques are under development and
will be used to establish climatologies of backscatter
cross section at 2 mm to support engineering and per-
formance evaluation of planned space-based coherent
Doppler lidar systems.
Acknowledgments. Initial funding for HRDL was pro-
vided by Walter Bach under Army Research Office Con-
tract ARO 117-92 and ETL base funds. Development
of the scanner, adaptation of HRDL for marine opera-
tions and shipboard measurements were made possible
under Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-93-F-
0029 under the auspices of Gary Geernaert and Dennis
Triszna. Deployment funding for HRDL at LIFT was
provided by Dave Carlson of the NCAR/ATD Director’s
Office. The authors wish to express their appreciation
to all those who worked hard to make HRDL a success,
including Chuck Frush of NCAR, who deserves much
credit for pampering the system into readiness for the
LIFT experiment; Anthony Francavilla and Keith
Koenig, who were largely responsible for the devel-
opment of the scanner attitude correction software; and
Kathleen Healy, Scott Sandberg, Doron Shalvi, and
Dave Larson for their first-rate technical support. Signal
processing and instrument definition discussions with
Barry Rye and Mike Hardesty have been essential in
setting design goals and signal processor requirements
and in evaluating HRDL performance. Special thanks
go to Shane Mayor for running his algorithm to estimate
the instrumental velocity variance from time series of
the LIFT cloud and boundary layer data. Alan Brewer
and Volker Wulfmeyer are continuing the development
of the HRDL laser and system under the auspices of
the NOAA–NCAR joint optical remote sensing group.
We further thank Alan Brewer for his thoughtful review
of this manuscript and Barry Rye for many useful and
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392 JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC TECHNOLOGY
thought-provoking discussions of issues related to lidar
performance.
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