A New Ultra-Fast Scanning Doppler Wind Lidar And Results From The Trials During The UFO Project

WINDCUBE instruments are a family of coherent Doppler lidars developed by LEOSPHERE for remote wind sensing. They are all based on pulsed fiber amplifiers and fiber architectures at 1.5µm previously developed at ONERA and industrialized by LEOSPHERE, giving reliability and flexibility for various applications, either for wind energy, meteorology and airport safety. Using different laser powers and telescope apertures, the different WINDCUBE lidars differ by their scanning possibilities, resolution and range performances. In the framework of UFO project, Leosphere has developed a new ultra-fast scanning Doppler lidar based on fiber technology and optimized post-processing algorithms. Using a powerful laser amplifier developed by ONERA, the potential features of this new prototype will be provided along with preliminary performance results from a campaign conducted in Toulouse, France. One of the challenges of the UFO project is to determine the remote monitoring capabilities of wind hazards around airports for all atmospheric conditions. Doppler lidars versatile mode of operation and 3D scanning capabilities makes it an instrument of choice for measuring wind and Eddy Dissipation Rate (EDR) as well as for monitoring wake vortices and wind shears as required in ICAO manuals. Leosphere developed optimized scanning scenarios to measure winds over 10 kilometers from the airport and along the flight glide path, with a fine spatial and temporal resolution. The presentation will provide details on the advanced capabilities of the device as well as initial results of wind fields retrieved from the first campaign of the UFO Project conducted at Toulouse Blagnac Airport in France.