Turbulent scintillation lidar for acquiring atmospheric turbulence information

Based on residual turbulent scintillation(RTS) theory, many lidar component parameters were analyzed, and the ones related to atmospheric turbulence detecting were obtained and optimized. An RTS lidar was then developed for acquiring atmospheric turbulence information. It is suggested that the lidar works normally and the data are reliable according to some performance tests of baseline, linearity characteristic and so on. The relationships of scintillation index and atmospheric refractive index structure constant with propagation distance and time in horizontal direction were experimentally obtained. The scintillation index increases from 0.001 to 0.35 with the propagation distance changing from 450 m to 2000 m, and the refractive index structure constant is between 1.010-16 and 1.010-15 m-2/3 and basically maintains homogenous in that distance range. From 10:00 am to 09:00 pm, the refractive index structure constant rises in the morning, falls in the afternoon and then rises in the evening approximately. On the whole, the variations of scintillation index and refractive index structure constant with propagation distance and time are similar to the theoretical results and practical measurements. The results suggest that the RTS lidar has the capability of extracting atmospheric turbulence information that varies with propagation distance and time in the lidar echo signal.