Lidar for Atmospheric Remote Sensing

presented by
A S SUCHITHRA
ID:195025005
M TECH-GI
K L UNIVERSITY
 Content
• Introduction

• Historical overview

• Lidar types

• Lidar equation

• Aerosols measurement
INTRODUCTION
 Historical Overview
• 1936 first reported result s of density profile
• 1953 first retrieval of temperature profiles from
density profile
• Early 1960s invention of laser(powerful light source
to lidar system)
• 1962 fist use of laser in a lidar
• 1977 first ozone measurement by lidar
• Present network of ground based lidar system as
NDSC,EARLINET,etc. lidars on aircraft.space based
lidar(ALISSA,LITE,CALIPSO program)
Historical Overview(2)
 Lidar Types
1.Surface elevation lidar:
Surface elevation lidars measure the laser pulse time-
of-flight and hence the distance from the spacecraft to
the surface and then solve for the surface elevation
with the knowledge of the spacecraft orbit position
with respect to the center of the mass of the Earth
2.Atmosphere Backscattering lidars:
Measure the attenuated backscatter as a function of
altitude
3.Laser spectral absorption lidar:
 Atmosphere backscatter lidars
There are several types of atmosphere backscattering lidars,
depending on the laser wavelength selection and the
receiver configuration .
1.Elastic back scattering lidar

2.Raman lidar

3.Differential absorption lidar(DIAL)

4.Doppler lidar

5.Fluorescence lidar
Lidar equation
 Consideration for lidar equation
• In general ,the interaction between light photons and
particles is a scattering process

• The expected photon counts are proportional to the

product of the
1.Transmettied laser photon number
2.Probability that a transmitted photon
is scattered
3. Probability that scattered photon is
collected
4.Light transmission through medium
5.Overall system efficiency
 .

• NS(R)=Expected received photon number from a

distance R
• NL(λL)=number of transmitted laser photons
• β( λ, λL,Ѳ,R)=scattering probability
• A/R2 = Receiving probability
• T(λL,R)T(λ,R)=transmission through medium
• ɲ(λ, λL)G(R) = lidar hardware optical efficiency(mirror,
lens, filters, detectors etc)
• NB= background photon counts
1st term: Transmitted photon number
.

NS(λ,R)=NL(λL) [β( λ, λL,Ѳ,R)ΔR] A/R2 [T(λL ,R)T(λ,R)]

[ɲ(λ, λL)G(R) ]+NB

NL(λL) = PL(λL ) Δt /hc/ λL

= Laser power*time bin length/plank constant
*laser frequency

= transmitted laser photon number

with in time bin length
2nd term : Scattering probability
.

[β( λ, λL,Ѳ,R)ΔR]

The probability that a transmitted photon is scattered by

scatters into a unit solid angle

Angular scattering probability = scatter coefficient β*

scattering layer thickness ΔR
NS(λ,R)=NL(λL) [β( λ, λL,Ѳ,R)ΔR] A/R2 [T(λL ,R)T(λ,R) [ɲ(λ,
.

λL)G(R) ]+NB
3rd term: Receiving Probability: The probability that a
scatter photon is collected by the receiving telescope, i.e.,t
he solid angle subtended by the receiver aperture to
scatterer
 .

4th term: light transmission

NS(λ,R)=NL(λL) [β( λ, λL,Ѳ,R)ΔR] A/R2 [T(λL ,R)T(λ,R)]
[ɲ(λ, λL)G(R) ]+NB
• the atmospheric transmission of laser light at
outgoing wavelength λL and return signal at
wavelength λ
transmission for laser light T(λL,R)
𝑅
=exp [-‫׬‬0 ∝ (λL ,r) dr]
transmission for return signal T(λ,R)
𝑅
= exp [-‫׬‬0 ∝ ( λ, r) dr]
Where ∝(λL ,r) and ∝(λ, r) are extinction coefficients
 .

𝑅 𝑅
[T(λL ,R)T(λ,R)]= exp [-(‫׬‬0 ∝ (λL ,r)dr]+‫׬‬0 ∝ ( λ, r)dr)]
When λL = λ
𝑅
= exp[ -2 ‫׬‬0 ∝ ( λ, r)dr]
Extension coefficient ∝ :
 .

5th term: [ɲ(λ, λL)G (R) ] overall Efficiency

ɲ(λ, λL)=ɲT (λL)+ ɲR(λ)

G(R) is the geometrical form factor, mainly concerning

the overlap of the area of laser irradiation with field of
view of the receiver optics
1.Elastic backscatter lidar
.

• Simplest type of lidar

• Rayleigh and Mie backscatter lidars measure the
elastic backscattering of the molecules and particles
in the atmosphere, in which the received laser signal
wavelength is exactly the same as the transmitted
ones
• Used for studies of aerosols and clouds
• Main drawback of this method is profiles of the
climate relevant volume extinction coeffient of the
particles cannot determined
 .

2.Raman lidar
• Raman backscatter lidars are similar to Rayleigh and Mie
backscattering lidars but measure the return signals at the
Raman-shifted wavelength
• Raman lidar exploits inelastic scattering
• Raman lidars are more difficult to built in general because
the laser transmitter has to be at the exact wavelength and
the receiver has to be able to filter out the Raman-shifted
signal
• Used for measure the concentration of atmosphere gases
and used to retrieve aerosol parameters
3.Differential absorption lidar(DIAL):
.

• Used for range resolved measurement of a particular gas in

atmosphere, such as ozone,co2,water vapour,GHGs
• Dual wavelength lidar (transmits two wavelength)
• Laser pulses carrying both on and off resonance photons
are emitted
• The back scattered photons are detected and counted at
the receiver
• Return time indicates distance and ratio of on to off
resonance photons reveals concentration of gases
4.Doppler lidar: used to measure the wind speed
5.Flourescence lidar: measure the concentration of
chemical species in the upper atmosphere such as OH-,Na,K
etc.
 Aerosols Measurement
• Small particles in atmosphere
• Influence on the earth radiation budget, air quality and
visibility, clouds, precipitation and chemical processes in
the troposphere and stratosphere.
• occurrence, residence time, physical properties,
chemical composition are subjected to large diversity
because of widely different sources and meteorological
process.
• vertically resolved measurements of physical and optical
properties of particles such as the mean particle size,
and the volume extinction coefficient are of great
interest.
• Aerosol lidars are elastic scattering lidar,Raman,HSRL
 Summary

• Lidar technique allows continuous monitoring

of profiles with good height resolution

• Different scattering mechanism permit

different kinds of measurement
 References
• http://indico.ictp.it/event/a08142/session/48/co
ntribution/31/material/0/0.pdf
• Lidar: Range-Resolved Optical Remote Sensing
of the Atmosphere
Ulla Wandinger (auth.), Dr. Claus Weitkamp (eds.)
• Water Vapor, Cloud and Aerosol Properties on
the Tibetan Plateau Using Multi-Lidar
Measurements
Wu, Songhua, Dai, Guangyao, Wang, Dongxiang,
Zhai, Xiaochun, Song, Xiaoquan, Gross, B., Moshary,
F., Arend, M.