Air cooled flight worthy eye-safe coherent lidar transceiver

Coherent lidar systems based on solid-state laser technology and operating at eye-safe wavelengths have rapidly evolved as useful sensors for several ground-based and airborne wind-related remote sensing applications. Until now, these systems did not lend themselves to many airborne applications due the constraints of their cost, size, weight and a large, power-consuming chiller required to keep the system temperature stabilized. In recent and ongoing engineering developments as part of the Laser Wind and Hazard Profiler (LWiHP) program, we have succeeded in producing a convective-air-cooled lidar transceiver with a factor of four reduction in size, weight, parts count and subsequent cost reductions. This effort was specifically aimed at installing lidar systems on both military helicopter (the Apache AH-64D) and high performance fighter aircraft (the F/A-18 and the Joint Strike Fighter) for several different wind sensing and obstacle detection applications. This paper describes the engineering development that enables these technology advances.