Exploration of Whole Atmosphere Lidar: Mach-zehnder Receiver to Extend Fe Doppler Lidar Wind Measurements from the Thermosphere to the Ground

A receiver employing a field-widened Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is investigated for extending the wind measurement range of a narrowband Fe Doppler (372 nm) lidar from its existing measurement range in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT) down to the ground. This design uses the multiple transmitted frequencies available from the base Fe Doppler lidar in combination with an MZI receiver to make a measurement of the Doppler shift from Rayleigh-Mie scattering that is independent of aerosol backscatter ratio, temperature and pressure of the lidar volume and also independent of geometric overlap, the chopper function and any other factor affecting the signal in both MZI channels equally. A ratio is constructed from the three frequencies and two channels of the interferometer that exhibits a measurement performance of 1.75 times the Cramer-Rao lower bound, which is comparable to the dual MZI (DMZ) while preserving the insensitivity to backscatter spectrum of the quad MZI (QMZ). Using actual data obtained recently from the Fe Doppler lidar, we show the expected measurement performance of this whole atmosphere lidar instrument concept.