Fabry-Perot etalon-based ultraviolet trifrequency high-spectral-resolution lidar for wind, temperature, and aerosol measurements from 0.2 to 35 km altitude.

A novel ultraviolet trifrequency high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL) based on a triple Fabry-Perot etalon (FPE) and polarization discrimination technique is proposed, to the best of our knowledge, for measuring atmospheric wind, temperature, and aerosol optical properties simultaneously from the troposphere to low stratosphere. The measurement principle of wind speed, temperature, and aerosol is analyzed, and the structure of the proposed HSRL is designed. The parameters of the triple FPE are optimized. The multiparameter inversion method based on the nonlinear iterative approach and cubic spline interpolation method is also discussed, and the specific iteration steps are given. Finally, the detection performance of the proposed HSRL is simulated. The simulation results show that for 0.3  WSr m nm at 355 nm sky brightness, by using a 350 mJ pulse energy, a 50 Hz repetition frequency laser, and a 0.45 m aperture telescope, the measurement errors of temperature, aerosol backscattering ratio and vertical wind speed are below 2.1 K, 2.5×10, and 2.2 m/s in nighttime and below 3.2 K, 3.4×10, and 2.6 m/s in daytime from 0.2 to 35 km with a temporal resolution of 5 min for temperature and aerosol, 1 min for vertical wind, and a vertical resolution of 30 m at 0.2-10 km, 100 m at 10-20 km, 200 m at 20-35 km; the measurement error of two other orthogonal line-of-sight wind speeds with a fixed zenith angle of 30° is below 2.9 m/s in nighttime and 3.9 m/s in daytime in the range of ±50  m/s from 0.2 to 35 km with a temporal resolution of 1 min and a vertical resolution of 26 m at 0.2-8.6 km, 87 m at 8.6-17.3 km, and 173 m at 17.3-35 km. Compared with the traditional double-edge wind-detection technique with the same complete instrumental parameters including those of the FPEs and FPE-based high-spectral-resolution temperature-detection technique with the optimal parameter values of FPEs for the same laser power and telescope aperture, the wind accuracy of the proposed technique improved by 1.5 times at night and by 1.5-1.9 times during the day, and the temperature accuracy of the proposed technique improved by 2.2-2.6 times at night and by 1.7-2.6 times during the day.