Development of an atmospheric polarization Scheimpflug lidar system based on a time-division multiplexing scheme.

A polarization Scheimpflug lidar system based on the Scheimpflug principle has been developed by employing two linearly polarized 808 nm laser diodes and a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor. The polarization of one laser diode is rotated 90° by a half-wave plate. The two laser beams with orthogonal polarizations are combined by a polarization beam splitter and transmitted into the atmosphere. The corresponding parallel- and perpendicular-polarized backscattering echoes are detected by the 45° tilted CMOS sensor using a time-division multiplexing scheme. A 24 h continuous atmospheric vertical profiling of the depolarization ratio has been performed by using the polarization Scheimpflug lidar system. The promising results successfully demonstrated that the present lidar system has potential for the polarization studies of atmospheric aerosols.