A study of Kalman filtering and maximum likelihood estimates of wind profiles using simulated laser distortion data

Wind profiles in turbulent atmosphere are estimated, using laser distortion data. A stochastic approach is introduced to develop a discretized model that describes the random behavior of the refractive index fluctuations, the random fluctuation of the atmosphere, and the uncertainty of the observations for a linear state system. A computer code has been developed to estimate the wind profile along the length of the laser beam. Numerous simulated runs for different wind profiles and different grid size in one, two, and three dimensions are presented. Results of simulations are compared with true wind profiles.