Abstract

The Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder (LAWS) will be designed to measure atmospheric winds over a wide range of atmospheric and backscatter conditions. The LAWS design includes many significant trades because of limited available power and limited available weight. The allocation of available power is a trade between many low energy pulses of low signal-to-noise (S/N) and few high energy pulses high S/N. The power allocation is complicated by range of backscatter conditions over which measurements must be made and by the two sources of measurement variation: measurement error and mesoscale variability of wind velocity. Minimization of measurement error favors a few high energy pulses. Representativeness of wind with mesoscale variability favors many low energy pulses. A second significant trade involves a trade between measurement accuracy and the fraction of the globe covered by the satellite.

© 1991 Optical Society of America