Coherent Doppler lidar measurements of winds in the weak signal regime

Abstract

In the weak signal regime coherent Doppler lidar velocity estimates are characterized by a localized distribution around the true mean velocity and a uniform distribution of random outliers over the velocity search space. The performance of velocity estimators is defined by the standard deviation of the good estimates around the true mean velocity and the fraction of random outliers. The quality of velocity estimates is improved with pulse accumulation. The performance of velocity estimates from two different coherent Doppler lidars in the weak signal regime is compared with the predictions of computer simulations for pulse accumulation from 1 to 100 pulses.