Coherent Doppler TEA CO2 lidar for wind velocity measurement

A coherent Doppler lidar for measuring wind velocity was constructed on the basis of a single-frequency TEA CO₂ laser with external-signal injection. The composition of the active mixture and the duration of the pump current pulses were optimised within the range of parameters that Doppler CO₂ lidar sources have to satisfy in order to minimise the spectral width of the output radiation at a given output energy. A prototype in which the real temporal and spectral characteristics of the probe laser pulse were taken into account was used to determine the wind velocity profile over horizontal and vertical paths up to 10 km long.