LIDAR, stands for Light Detection And Ranging, is an active optical remote sensing instrument. It is an innovative technique that uses laser for probing the planetary atmosphere [1, 2, and 3]. Atmospheric LIDARs use narrow pulsed lasers. Flash-lamp pumping is generally employed in generation of Q-switched lasers. Flash-lamp pumped (FLP) systems produce lasers at low repetition rate with high pulse energies. Several problems such as limited life-time of flash-lamp and requirement of pump motors for driving deionised (DI) water to cool the laser cavities limit the applications of FLP systems in strategic fields. Recent technologies employ semiconductor diodes as pump sources for solid-state lasing materials. These units built-in with accousto-optic modulator (AOM) produce pulse modulation in laser at high repetition rates. Diode pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers offer several advantages over conventional FLP types. DPSS lasers generate radiations in Infrared (IR), visible and ultraviolet (UV) spectral bands. The commercially available DPSS lasers offer features as high pulse repetition rate, excellent beam profile, compact size, narrow pulsing, good spectral purity, long-life and stable output. Moreover, DPSS lasers operate with air cooling.
Recently LIDARs were employed with Q-switched DPSS lasers for atmospheric investigations. Micro pulse LIDAR [MPL] is a version of DPSS laser based new generation LIDAR technology. In recent years, MPLs have become increasingly popular owing to their unattended operation and more suitable for long-term measurement of atmospheric parameters [4]. The MPL uses high repetition rate, low pulse energy lasers for atmospheric investigations [5].
The MPL technology was successful globally and have been used in the studies of high altitude clouds [6], atmospheric aerosol [7], slow air motion [ 8], aerosol extinction [9], global monitoring of aerosols and clouds [10], boundary layer aerosol [11], internal boundary layer [12, 13], horizontal visibility [14], low humidity layer [15], multilayer clouds [16], aerosol studies in traffic [17] and also in airborne studies [18].
In India, recently a portable LIDAR [19, 20] was successfully demonstrated at National Atmospheric Research Laboratory (NARL) for atmospheric studies. The NARL is a Department of Space (DOS) unit operates several LIDAR instruments for atmospheric studies [21, 22, 23, and 24]. The portable LIDAR uses micro pulse operation and was developed under boundary layer LIDAR (BLL) project. The BLL was a popular LIDAR technology in India caused by “its” low-cost design and numerous applications in the scientific field. The BLL was constructed with several innovative features and was filed for intellectual property rights under ISRO in the year 2009 [25].
There is more than 200,000,000 drivers on the road in the United States alone, what are the chances of you colliding with another from someone running a red light. The red light cameras are rising controversy to citizens in every state, and individuals have had a difficult time finding the truth out of traffic cameras. Traffic limitations have created a better nation of safety on the streets but have also created further problems.
The effectiveness of high energy lasers against short-range rockets was tested and demonstrated in the Nautilus program, an outgrowth...
Landsat Project Science Officeat NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Landsat Glacier Bay. 2003. USA. Visible Earth NASA. Web. 16. Mar. 2014.
High precision spectrometers such as HARPS are required to preform observations as very high signal to noise ratio. HARPS is a high resolution fiber-fed echelle spectrograph. To maximize the chance of detecting an exoplanet certain requirements have to be met by potential targets. The targets chosen to be studied by HARPS are selected from COR...
"The Optical SETI Resource for Planet Earth." The Columbus Optical SETI Observatory. 1999. Columbus Observatory. 27 January 2000 http://www.coseti.org/.
INTRODUCTION The AprizeSat spacecraft, built, owned, and operated by SpaceQuest, Ltd. are part of a constellation of micro- satellites with a primary Machine-to-Machine (M2M) mission. On 29 July 2009, SpaceQuest launched AprizeSat-3 (AS3) and AprizeSat-4 (AS4). Both spacecraft continue to perform their M2M and AIS missions in their sun-synchronous orbits. Design, integration, and testing of the next generation AprizeSat spacecraft began in September 2008.
To power such high-energy lasers, SDI researchers had to develop a new, more powerful type of power. The Multi-megawatt, or MMW, was the main focus for power. During most of the 1980’s the SDI’s MMW Space Nuclear Power Program was the first major focus for work on the high-power open and closed cycle reactors. The work on the nuclear power systems, conducted by the Energy Department under the SDI program, was complemented by the Air Force investigations of non-nuclear power concepts.
A micro-optics as an accompaniment to optical fiber communication - by way of all optical related devices and optical switches is the third generation of MEMS commercialization [5]. And the fourth wave of the commercialization could be other applications that may include biological and neural probes, also called lab-on-chip drug development and biochemical system and macroscale drug delivery system. E-nose is also the latest application that comes under fourth generation of MEMS commercialization.
In our experiment it’s important to determine some parameters of magnetized plasma. For this purpose, two kinds of optical diagnostics will be used: Interferometry and Polarimetry. Interferometry is used to determine density gradients and thereby the density via Abel Transformation. Polarimetry gives information about the Stokes Components of a laser beam and thereby the Faraday Rotation in order to determine the integrated underlaying B-Field strength. This chapter is focused on polarimetry.
The continuous monitoring of pollution level in urban areas is important for a smart city. There are several parameter changes that indicate the pollution such as dust particle density in the air, humidity and the level of sound noise [3].
Scientists and engineers have been able to enhance our lifestyles by understanding and using the Laws, Concepts and Principles of Optics and how they are applied in Optical Instruments. The key concepts are:
In the 1990’s, Light Detection and Ranging System (LiDAR) has been introduced in Bathymetry. LiDAR uses laser to gather data. LiDAR Bathymetry Systems are either airborne or terrestrial. Today, SoNAR is preferred over LiDAR because of the unstable behavior of light in water. Light bends, reflects, and scatters in water while sound only varies in its speed and propagates along a single track without scattering. SoNAR Bathymetry Systems are more straightforward and simple than LiDAR systems because of the complexity of light over sound in water. Current studies are making use of these two systems to complement and to verify gathered data.
Thousands of small sized pieces of space waste i.e. Screw, glove, and piece of an antenna broken off from an old satellite orbit Earth. Such debris is harmful for satellites. The cleanspace project anticipates using laser technology to do a proper clean up. Orbit prediction results on the effect of the velocity change due to Laser Debris Removal engagement is performed for standard debris objects and different combinations of LDR characteristics.
Kennedy, Gerry. "The Spectronics Blog." The Spectronics Blog RSS. Spectronicsinoz, 15 May 2012. Web. 04 Mar. 2014.
... input parameters, efficiency of the lightning detection system and the observation period (Smorgonskiy et al.,2013). They proposed two new methods, namely, a gradient-based method and a subarea decomposition method, which provided positive results for the direct proportionality of elevation with lightning density even for altitudes above 1500 m across Switzerland and Austria. These results generally coincided with Schulz’s and Diendorfer’s (1999) study in Austria. As opposed to the findings of Smorgonskiy et al. (2013), Schulz and Diendorfer (1999) focused on a smaller area where the lightning location system had the best performance, and they overlapped it with elevations given by the GLOBE digital elevation model. They discovered that after an increase in flash density with altitude, beyond 2000, the flash density starts decreasing due to proximity of cloud bases.