Conceptual design of an unmanned aircraft laser system for aviation pollution measurements

This paper presents the recent research activities aimed at developing a flexible and low-cost measurement system for the determination of aviation-related pollutant concentrations in dense air traffic areas. The proposed bistatic Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) system includes an airborne component and a ground-based component. The airborne component consists of a tuneable laser emitter installed on an Unmanned Aircraft (UA) and the ground-based component is constituted by a target surface calibrated for reflectance and a rail-mounted camera calibrated for radiance. The system performs Differential Absorption LIDAR (DIAL) measurements. The specific implementation for the measurement of CO2 in the aerodrome traffic zone of a major airport is studied in this paper. The analytical and empirical models to directly estimate the extinction coefficients are also presented and uncertainty analysis is performed for a preliminary validation of the bistatic DIAL system. The relevant opportunities and challenges, and the viability of the system in the intended operational domains are also discussed. The presented numerical results show satisfactory performances in term of accuracy and precision even in degraded meteorological conditions, which are comparable to the more complex and relatively costly techniques currently available.