Design and performance simulations for an airborne DIAL system for long-range remote sensing applications

The U.S. Air Force Phillips Laboratory is evaluating the feasibility of long-standoff-range remote sensing of gaseous species present in trace amounts in the atmosphere. To date, the Phillips Laboratory program has been concerned with the preliminary design and performance analysis of a commercially available CO2 laser-based DIAL system operating from mountain-top-observatory and airborne platform (1) and more recently with long-range ground testing using a 21.8 km slant path from 3.05 km ASL to sea level (2-4) as the initial steps in the design and development of an airborne system capability. Straightforward scaling of the performance of a near-term technology direct-detection LIDAR system with propagation range to a topographic target and with the average atmospheric absorption operation will be verified during these tests prior to integration of the system on board the ARGUS NC-135 aircraft.