Preliminary measurements of profiles of aerosol/cloud in the lower atmosphere using a homemade stationary groundbased lidar system will be presented. In addition, information on basic characteristics and performance of the lidar system will be provided. Aerosol/Cloud lidar system in monostatic coaxial configuration uses the fundamental (1064 nm) and the second harmonic (532 nm) of a pulsed solid state Nd:YAG laser to provide information on the relative concentration and spatial distribution of aerosol particles and cloud water droplets. Beam expander is used to reduce the laser beam divergence before to be transmitted into the atmosphere. In this study, high-resolution vertical profiles from the near ground up to 15 km altitude are obtained. A Newtonian telescope of diameter 400 mm with an adjustable field of view (FOV) is used to collect the elastic backscattered signal. A photomultiplier tube (PMT) is used for the 532 nm wavelength detection channel, while an avalanche photodiode (APD) is used for the 1064 nm wavelength detection channel. The optoelectronic detection channels use two similar very high frequency preamplification circuit. Data are acquired with a nominal spatial resolution of 7.5 m using a 12-bit 20 MHz analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for each channel. Many functions, such as, range determination, background subtraction, digitization, and averaging are performed by the receiver subsystem. In addition, spatial resolution and linear dynamic range were optimized during signal processing.
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