Preliminary Studies on Atmospheric Monitoring by Employing a Portable Unmanned Mie-Scattering Scheimpflug Lidar System

A portable unmanned Mie-scattering Scheimpflug lidar system has been designed and implemented for atmospheric remote sensing. The Scheimpflug lidar system employs a continuous-wave high-power 808 nm laser diode as the light source and the emitted laser beam is collimated by an F6 lens with a 100 mm aperture. Atmospheric backscattering light is collected by a F5 lens with a 150 mm aperture and then detected by a 45° tilted image sensor. The separation between the transmitting and the receiving optics is about 756 mm to satisfy the Scheimpflug principle. Unmanned outdoor atmospheric measurements were performed in an urban area to investigate system performance. Localized emissions can be identified by performing horizontal scanning measurements over the urban atmosphere for 107° approximately every 17 min. The temporal variation of the vertical aerosol structure in the boundary layer has also been studied through zenith scanning measurements. The promising result shows great potential of the present portable lidar system for unmanned atmospheric pollution monitoring in urban areas.