The signal correction of a CW-laser-outgoing Helium Lidar based on an
area-array ICCD
Abstract
A Helium Lidar system, which is being developed for measurements of
metastable helium density in the thermosphere and exosphere, employs a
CW 1083nm laser with power of 60W, a telescope array consisting of six
1m-diameter telescope and an area-array ICCD. To realize range-resolved
remote sensing, the laser is located separately from the location of
telescope with a distance of D and the laser beamed is leaned towards
the Field-of-view (FOV) of the telescope array with an zenith angle of
θ. The signal in a specific height is finally imaged onto a
corresponding pixel of the ICCD. Before the retrieval of metastable
helium density, the first procedure is to decide the relation between
the pixels and corresponding heights. Based on the FOV of the telescope,
the divergence angle of the laser beam, the geometry of the laser and
telescope, and the size of the pixels, every pixel corresponds to a
specific height range, as shown in Fig. 1. The darkest shade corresponds
to one pixel of the ICCD. Therefore, the second procedure is to correct
the height range overlap of the signal from adjacent pixels to decrease
the smoothness of the signal profile caused by the height overlap of
adjacent pixels. The signal received by the ICCD is simulated based on a
metastable helium density model developed by Waldrop et. al. The results
show that these two signal correcting procedures can improve the
precision of each pixel’s signal by 5% in average.