Analysis of atmospheric laser Doppler velocimeters.

Fundamental relationships between backscattered power, range, wavelength, and number of scatter centers in the probe volume for the self-aligning, dual-scatter, laser doppler velocimeter are developed. It is shown that not all power scattered from the velocimeter probe volume contributes to a doppler signal. This fact leads to significant deviations in calculations involving signal-to-noise power ratios as compared to the case when only gross backscattered power is considered.