Practical considerations for the design of CO(2) lidar systems

A 10.6-microm single laser lidar system has been utilized to monitor the amplitude, standard deviation, and correlation of returns from foliage, hillside, and man-made targets as a function of the lidar system divergence and mode shape, the receiver field of view and receiver/transmitter alignment tolerance, the repetition rate, and the sampling time. Studies of the dependence of the system sensitivity on signal averaging and signal correlation demonstrate performance comparable with that achieved with reported dual laser lidar systems.