Abstract

The Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder (LAWS) is a facility instrument of the Earth Observing System (EOS) designed to measure global wind profiles from a low-earth-orbiting platform. LAWS consists of a pulsed CO₂ laser, a meter-class optical system conically-scanning about nadir, and a heterodyne receiver. A previous paper (Petheram et al, 1989) compared various system concepts for measuring wind velocities from space and presented the LAWS Phase I preliminary design. Platform configurations were not available for instrument accommodation studies during Phase I, and so a surrogate platform based on EOS-A was used. Figure 1 shows the Phase I preliminary instrument configuration accommodated on the EOS-A type platform. This paper further refines the Phase I design and discusses the methods used to select the subsystem parameters for the chosen CO₂ Doppler lidar concept, given the instrument performance requirements and the spacecraft platform constraints.

© 1991 Optical Society of America