Development and test of a UV lidar receiver for the measurement of wind velocities aiming at the near-range characterization of wake vortices and gusts in clear air

Kurzfassung

Gusts and wake vortices are a major cause of comfort degradations, incidents, and efficiency-reducing structure reserves in air traffic nowadays. Concepts for the automatic feed-forward control of these turbulences, i.a. during cruising flight, require highly-resolved near-range measurements of wind speeds in atmospheric regions with low aerosol concentrations. For this purpose a lidar receiver for uniaxial measurements is developed and tested in this thesis. A comparison of existing Doppler wind lidar concepts with respect to the requirements yields a fringe-imaging Michelson interferometer combined with a fast linear detector array. Monolithic design and fiber coupling aim at thermo-mechanical stability. The concept is evaluated through calculations and end-to-end simulations. The receiver prototype is then implemented and characterized in the laboratory. First ground-based measurements in spring 2018 are carried out in comparison to a commercial coherent lidar, revealing precise, range-resolved performance, whereby temporally variable systematic errors occur. Further improvements are necessary for alleviating wake vortex encounters.