Development of All-fiber coherent Doppler LIDAR system for wind sensing

Coherent Doppler LIDAR is being utilized to develop a mobile wind speed measuring station. We are building an all fiber based eye safe laser system to measure wind speed in urban areas. A 1.5μ.m polarization maintained fiber optics master oscillator power amplifier system is used, which utilizes inexpensive telecommunication components. A heterodyne balanced detection is being used to suppress the RIN noise. We have calculated the optimum local oscillator power for maximum optical detector’s efficiency. Analog to digital conversion (ADC) will be performed at 400 MHZ by using a data acquisition card with FPGA on board, which can be programmed to perform autocorrelation and/or FFT onboard for faster performance. This system can be used along with other units on top of high buildings in New York City as a way of detecting wind speed profile for Homeland security.