Application of the Lamp Mapping Technique to Raman LIDAR Systems

The lamp mapping technique has recently been introduced to the Raman LIDAR community as a means for water vapor mixing ratio calibration (Venable et. al). Here we introduce other applications of the lamp mapping technique to the Raman LIDAR. It has been discovered that the lamp mapping technique can also be used to obtain an overlap correction and glue coefficients. The technique also provides information concerning optical misalignment. The lamp mapping technique involves scanning a halogen lamp of known spectra irradiance over the aperture of the telescope in conjunction with the LIDAR detection system. The benefit of the lamp mapping technique is that it depends on the optics and detection system of the LIDAR. Therefore, the lamp mapping technique offers a correction to LIDAR data that is only dependent on LIDAR system parameters. This study was conducted using two LIDAR systems to demonstrate that the mapping technique can be applied to Raman LIDAR systems with different optical designs.