For over 20 years researchers have been investigating the feasibility of profiling tropospheric vector wind velocity from space with a pulsed Doppler lidar. Efforts have included theoretical development, system and mission studies, technology development, and ground-based and airborne measurements. Now NASA plans to take the next logical step towards enabling operational global tropospheric wind profiles by demonstrating horizontal wind measurements from the Space Shuttle in early 2001 using a coherent Doppler wind lidar system

Emmitt, G. David

Kavaya, Michael J.

English

NASA Technical Reports Server

NASA/rM. 208265
Tropospheric Wind Measurements From Space:
The SPARCLE Mission And Beyond
Michael J. Kavaya _ and G. David Emmitt b
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Mall Code HR20, Huntsville, AL 3 5812
b Simpson Weather Associates, PO Box 5508, Charlottesville, VA 22905
ABSTRACT
For over 20 years researchers have been investigating the feasibility of profiling tropospheric vector wind
velocity from space with a pulsed Doppler lidar. Efforts have included theoretical development, system and mission
studies, technology development, and ground-based and airborne measurements. Now NASA plans to take the next
logical step towards enabling operational global tropospheric wind profiles by demonstrating horizontal wind
measurements from the Space Shuttle in early 2001 using a coherent Doppler wind lidar system.
THE SPARCLE MISSION
The goals of SPARCLE _ are:
1) to demonstrate that coherent Doppler wind lidar (CDWL) can provide the desired global wind measurements.
2) to validate performance models for use in assessing proposed future follow-on missions, and
3) to measure characteristics of the atmosphere, clouds, and earth surface for optimum design of future missions.
SPARCLE is primarily a technology demonstration mission, which is consistent with its selection as
NASA's New Millennium Program (NMP) second Earth Orbiter lEO-2) mission. The mission will be managed by
the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and include key partnerships with the NASA Langley Research Center
(LaRC) for the pulsed solid state laser technology, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for tunable
continuous wave (CW) solid state laser technology, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) for
optomechanical design, Coherent Technologies, Inc. (CTI) for the flight laser subsystem, and Simpson Weather
Associates (SWA) for science guidance. The authors are the co-principal investigators for the instrument and the
science, respectively. SPARCLE will utilize the Hitchhiker (H/I) program, managed by the NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center (GSFC) for riding on the space shuttle. The instrument will be contained in two pressurized HH
canisters, each about 50 cm in diameter and 72 cm long, mounted on the sill (wall) of the shuttle payload bay. The
shuttle will turn upside down with its payload bay facing the earth during instrument operation. The schedule
consists of instrument delivery to GSFC/HH in 33 months, followed by launch 6 months after that in early 2001.
"Further author information
M.J.K.: Email: michael.kavaya@msfc.nasa.gov; Telephone: 256-922-5803; Fax: 256-922-5772
G.D.E.: Email: gde@thunder.swa.com; Telephone: 804-979-3571; Fax: 804-979-5599
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19980210624 2020-06-18T00:34:01+00:00Z
THE COHERENT DOPPLER WIND LIDAR
The heart of the CDWL is the pulsed transmitter laser:. The side diode-pumped laser will have nominal
specifications of 2.051 micron wavelength, 100 mJ pulse energy, 180 ns pulse duration, and 6 Hz pulse repetition
frequency. (PRF). This yields a total transmitted optical power of 0.6 W, which will be sufficient to demonstrate
vector wind velocity measurement due to the very. good photon efficiency, of the coherent detection technique. The
Gaussian cross section laser beam is expanded using an innovative, compact, diffraction limited telescope having
approximately a 25 cm diameter primary mirror. 3 A silicon wedge scanner deflects the expanded beam 30 deg.
from the nadir position 4.
By rotating the scanner about the optical axis of the transmitted beam leaving the telescope, a set of
possible lidar pointing directions forming a cone of half angle 30 deg. about the nadir direction is enabled.
Horizontal wind measurements are then possible by measuring the line of sight (LOS) wind of a parcel of air from
two different perspectives.
The pulsed laser light will impinge on the aerosol particles occurring naturally in the air, and which move
with the air's velocity. The laser beam will be approximately 4 m in diameter at the aerosol target. Since the laser's
pulse length in the atmosphere is about 27 m, the instantaneous interaction volume of the laser light with the
atmosphere is cylindrically shaped. The efficiency with which the aerosol particles scatter the laser light back in
the direction of the lidar is defined by the parameter [3, the aerosol backscatter coefficient.
A few of the backscattered photons return to the CDWL system and reenter the 25 cm diameter telescope.
The total Doppler shift of the backscattered photons is due to the total relative motion of the shuttle and the air
parcel. This consists of the wind, the shuttle velocity., and the earth's rotation.. For each laser shot, the gross
Doppler shift is predicted, and a frequency tunable local oscillator (LO) laser s is tuned to dramatically reduce the
range of signal frequencies.
The backscattered photons are combined with the LO laser photons on the surface on an [nGaAs detector
using either a fiber optic coupler, or using free space combining. The detector output signal occurs at the difference
frequency between the backscattered photons and the LO photons, which is arranged to be in the radio frequency
(RF) range for the benefit of the receiver components that follow the detector. The signal is digitized and processed
to estimate LOS wind velocity. The velocity estimation algorithms may be envisioned as performing a Fourier
Transformation on a particular time interval of the detector signal, and locating the frequency (velocity.) of the
resultant spectrum's peak.
Several different scanning patterns are planned for SPARCLE to allow many aspects of the CDWL
hardware, the atmosphere, and velocity estimation to be investigated. These scan patterns differ in: 1) the number
of scanner azimuth positions, and therefore locations, in cross-track coordinates, that are probed from two or more
perspectives; 2) in the number of perspectives (usually two) that an air parcel is probed from; and 3) in the time
spent in a single perspective to allow multiple laser shots to accumulate. Lidar shot accumulation is the use of
multiple lidar shots of the same perspective to obtain LOS velocity measurements in atmospheric regions having an
aerosol backscatter coefficient 13too low for single lidar shot velocity measurement. The aerosol backscatter
sensitivity that yields a fixed velocity estimation performance is expected to improve proportionally to the square
root of the number of shots accumulated.
VELOCITY MEASUREMENT PERFORMANCE
When 13= 135o,with about 4 contributing or "coherent" photoelectrons, employing velocity estimators to
the detector output signal yields "good" LOS wind velocity estimates about half (50%) of the time. 6 This "good"
estimate percentage rises above 99% of the time for about 25 contributing photoelectrons. The velocity estimates
from each LOS measurement volume (i.e., 290 m or 2 _ of data) for each lidar shot are subject to these statistics.
To understand this behavior, one can visualize that the highest signal in the Fourier Transform signal spectral
domain corresponds to the frequenc 3, bin containing the true veloci .ty. These estimates are tightly grouped about the
true LOS wind velocity, with a spread or error that is only slightly larger than the spread or second moment of the
atmospheric LOS wind velocities within the LOS measurement volume. The error contribution due solely to the
CDWL is typically less than 1 m/s. The other half of the velocity estimates at this particular value of 13will be
uniformly spread over the 20 m/s wide search bandwidth planned for use in post-mission data processing (PMDP).
This corresponds to a noise spike in the signal spectral domain rising higher that the true wind signal. For higher
values of [3, the percent of good estimates will be larger. For lower values of 13,the percentage of good estimates
will be smaller, but the remaining good estimates will be very accurate. The theory, linking CDWL SNR to velocity.
measurement had been found to agree with experimental data to within 5% _.
Two other very important factors in the final velocity measurement performance are: 1) the
representativeness of the calculated horizontal wind velocity., using measured LOS velocities, to the actual
horizontal velocity of the atmospheric horizontal measurement volume of interest, and 2) non-lidar engineering
contributions to velocity error. Representativeness can be understood by imagining the error due to measuring the
wind very well in only one comer of a 100 km x 100 km horizontal measurement volume, and then assigning the
answer to the entire volume. This error depends on the variations of the wind over the horizontal measurement
volume. The representativeness issue is more important in planning future operational wind massions than for
SPARCLE. However, scan patterns are planned to confirm current thinking and to design future sampling
strategies, s The non-lidar engineering contributions to velocity error are discussed in the next section.
GENERAL SPACE ACCOMMODATION REQUIREMENTS
The measurement of vector winds from space with a laser involves complex interactions of the lidar
instrument, the space platform, the atmosphere, and the earth. The LOS wind velocity, accurac3 _consists of factors
selectable during PMDP as well as factors fixed at the time of measurement. The LOS wind velocity, accuracy.
factors selectable during PMDP are shot accumulation quantity, the vertical integration length of data used in a
velocity estimate, the velocity estimation algorithm, and the horizontal velocity search processing bandwidth (a
priori limit on possible velocities currently planned to be 20 m/s). The LOS wind velocity accuracy, factors fixed at
the time of measurement consist of contributions from the coherent lidar (CL) system, the spacecraft/platform, the
atmosphere, and the earth. The spacecraft/platform contributes to lowered SNR by contributing to the
misalignment angle of the CL receiver after the round trip of the photons to and from the atmosphere. Knowledge
errors in the spacecraft/platform horizontal and vertical velocity, horizontal and vertical location, and angular
orientation comprise the non-SNR effects. The atmosphere contributes to lowered SNR through laser beam
extinction on the transmit and receive paths, spatial coherence length reduction of the reflected light due to the
random locations and spatial extent of the illuminated aerosol particles, and spatial coherence length reduction of
the reflected light due to refractive turbulence. (The latter phenomenon may usually be neglected for space-based
scenarios.) The non-SNR contribution of the atmosphere to the LOS velocity accuracy comes through the signal
spectrum broadening from the instantaneous wind velocity variations in the LOS measurement volume. The earth
only contributes through the non-SNR effects of knowledge error of its radius and local horizontal direction.
(Making an accurate LOS wind measurement, but assigning it to the wrong location and/or angle constitutes an
error.) A third possible earth contribution would come from the assumption that the earth surface return represents
a zero velocity target if in fact there is motion (e.g., water, vegetation). The CL effects on LOS wind velocity.
accuracy also divide into SNR and non-SNR factors. Non-SNR contributors are knowledge error of the transmitted
laser beam direction, and signal spectrum broadening from the transmitted laser pulse's spectnun.
ROADMAP TO FUTURE MISSIONS
SPARCLE is the next stepping stone towards enabling future science and operational tropospheric wind
profiling missions. In parallel with SPARCLE, NASA is continuing the advance the CDWL technology so that it
will be ready when needed. Future missions will likely be at orbit heights of 400-833 km and nadir angles of 30-45
degrees, compared to 300 km and 30 degrees for SPARCLE. Mission lifetimes will be 1-7 years. The desired data
productwillbehorizontalvectorwindaccuraciesof 1-2rn/scoupledwithanaerosolbackscattersensitivitiesof
l-2x 10"1°m_sr_at2micronwavelength.ThisleadstorequiredCDWLparametersofapproximatelyI-2 Jpulse
energy,10-20HzPRF,5%transmitterlaserelectricaltoopticalefficiency,0.75- 1mopticsdiameter,lidarsystem
efficienciesnear10%,andshotaccumulationf 10-100pulses.MSFC,LaRC,andJPLcontinuetocollaborateo
achievetheseadvances.
ACI_NOWLEDGEMENTS
Theauthorsaregratefulforthesupportof NASA's Office of Earth Science (formerly ,Mission To Planet
Earth) and NASA's New Millennium Program.
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Tropospheric Wind Measurements from Space: The SPARCLE Mission and Beyond

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