SBIR-STTR Award

The Phase I effort will define an optimized, portable, rugged, incoherent, eye-safe Doppler lidar system for use in detecting wind velocity above helicopters at ranges greater than 5 km. Initial system design and component specifications will be completed in this effort. Lite Cycles, Inc. intends to commercialize this technology within both the DoD and the private sector. There are three primary private sector markets that have applications for this technology: (1) Wind shear detection at high altitudes for Clear Air Turbulence (CAT) for commercial airlines; (2) Wake vortex detection lidar systems on major airport runways to space incoming landings safely; and (3) Wind sensing for weather prediction. The Clear Air Turbulence requirement is a result of passenger and crew injuries and death on commercial flights when encountering CAT during a flight. The CAT risk is higher when flying over certain mountain ranges. Airlines are interested in an affordable solution to early warning instruments that will allow either flight course changes or a seat belt buckle advisory for passengers. Coherent lidar systems have limited use at 30,000 ft altitude and above because they depend on aerosol scattering for the return signal. Direct detection can use the return from molecular scattering, so it is not dependent on the availability of aerosols to provide the return. Incoherent Doppler lidar is less complex than coherent systems and will be more robust, compact, and less expensive. CAT instruments could potentially be installed on most commercial aircraft worldwide. This is a large number of systems and constitutes a large enough market to justify development of a system both for incorporation into new aircraft and for retrofitting existing aircraft. The wake vortex detection instrument is used to determine the wake vortex trailing large aircraft during landings at airports. Current airport regulations for time between aircraft landings are based on experience. An instrument to measure and report wake vortex data for each aircraft would allow far safer and considerably higher landing rates at busy airports. The market is worldwide, and airports with high traffic rates would be targeted for installation of these systems. Larger airports may require several systems to cover multiple runways.

The objective of this effort is to develop a high-performance, low-cost, eyesafe Doppler lidar sensor that utilizes Direct-Detection Doppler Lidar (D3L) techniques. Our Phase I analyses show that properly implemented D3L techniques offer significant performance and cost advantages over the legacy optical heterodyne and incoherent detection techniques. The program goal is to produce a portable D3L sensor that is capable of detecting 1-m turbulent cells with as low as 10-20 cm/s disturbance velocities at greater than 5 km and is compatible with a Future Combat Systems (FCS) sensor suite. LCI will leverage its eyesafe 3D flash-ladar sensor development performed under DARPA's JIGSAW program to define an integrated multifunction combat ID (CID) sensor suite for an FCS platform. During Phase-II, a prototype D3L sensor will be developed and tested against helicopter targets. The field experiments will be performed in conjunction with AMCOM, and the results will be shared with the FCS primes. Potential Government applications include helicopter signature detection, precision airdrops and ballistic targeting, global winds measurements and weather prediction, environmental monitoring, non-proliferation, chemical and biological standoff detection, and CID. The largest commercial market is aviation safety, which requires sensors for detecting clear-air turbulence (CAT), wind shear, microbursts, and wake-vortices