Colored Noise Reduction Method for the Improvement of Air Turbulence Detection on an Airborne Doppler LIDAR

Abstract

We are pursuing the research and development of a practical airborne Doppler LIDAR that will detect air turbulence which is a major cause of significant injuries and aircraft damages. Although a longer detection range of air turbulence could be achieved by using higher powered laser to give advanced warning to crew and passengers, it implies larger and heavier devices which are not suitable for airborne applications. We introduce a colored noise reduction method which reduces the measurement errors and extends the measurement range for the air turbulence detection. We show that the detection range of air turbulence is improved by about 40% using the colored noise reduction method.

Filtering Algorithm of Airborne Doppler Lidar Measurements for Improved Wind Estimation

“…Concerning the processes to obtain wind velocity, standard deviation and SNR described above, as well as the appearance of the spectrum at each range-bin, please also refer to Asahara et al 9,10) The detection of a spectrum peak is critically important to obtain correct wind velocity. The peak detection from spectrum data fails in distant measurement ranges because the backscattered signal level becomes smaller than the measured noise level.…”