Design and development of a novel bistatic DIAL measurement system for aviation pollutant concentrations

This paper presents the research activities aimed at developing a flexible and low-cost measurement system for the determination of aviation-related pollutant concentrations in the vicinity of airports and other dense air traffic contexts. The proposed bistatic Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) system consists of two non-collocated components. The source component consists of a tuneable laser emitter, which can either be installed on a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) or operated from fixed and movable surface installations. The sensor component is constituted by a target surface calibrated for reflectance and a rail-mounted visible or infrared camera calibrated for radiance. The system performs Differential Absorption LIDAR (DIAL) measurements. The relevant opportunities and challenges, and the viability of the system in the intended operational environments are discussed. Numerical simulation results show promising performances in term of error expected error budget even in degraded meteorological conditions, which are comparable to the more complex and relatively costly monostatic LIDAR techniques currently available.