Abstract

A design effort considered a large solar collector as a lidar receiver for the Geophysics Laboratory's High Altitude Mobile Lidar system. There exists a large 11 meter diameter parabolic dish solar collector that is available for lidar applications at Sandia National Laboratory's Solar Test Facility at Kirtland AFB, MN. In particular, we describe the characteristics of the Sandia Test Bed Concentrator #1 and #2. See Figure 1. This facility was designed in the early 1980's at the height of the solar energy research effort for approximately $500,000. It provides 95 square meters of receiving area, 19 times more area than we currently have with the 100 inch collimator facility at Wright Patterson AFB and 120 times more than we have at our GL penthouse facility. The large increase in collection area would appear to provide major improvements in the sensitivity of rayleigh lidar. Unfortunately, the increased difference in optical blur circle diameter has a significant impact on signal return at altitudes where the statistical error is background limited as opposed to signal limited.

© 1990 Optical Society of America