Raman lidar at 355  nm using low dead time photon counting for atmospheric aerosol measurements

Photon counting is an effective way to enhance the dynamic range of the data acquisition system (DAQ) in Raman lidars. However, there exists a deficiency of relatively high dead times among current options, which necessitates an additional calibration procedure for the nonlinearity of the photon cou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied optics (2004) 2024-02, Vol.63 (6), p.1529
Main Authors: Chen, Feitong, Wu, Lingyun, Chen, Chuxiao, Wan, Xueping, Chen, Wentai, Chen, Xiaolong, Zhou, Jianfeng, Cheng, Miao, Fu, Zhewei, Ding, Naiying, Deng, Zhiji, Shen, Yibing, Liu, Chong, Bai, Jian, Wu, Lan, Sun, Wenbo, Liu, Dong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atmospheric aerosols
Calibration
Data acquisition
Field programmable gate arrays
Lidar
Logic design
Modules
Photons
Upgrading
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Summary:Photon counting is an effective way to enhance the dynamic range of the data acquisition system (DAQ) in Raman lidars. However, there exists a deficiency of relatively high dead times among current options, which necessitates an additional calibration procedure for the nonlinearity of the photon counting signal, thus leading to unanticipated errors. A field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based photon counting module has been proposed and implemented in a Raman lidar, offering two operational channels. Through observational experiments, it was determined that this module has an overall dead time of 1.13 ns taking advantage of the high-speed amplifier/discriminator pair and the logic design, a significant improvement compared to the 4.35 ns of a commercially used Licel transient recorder within the same counting rate range. This notably low dead time implies that its output maintains sufficient linearity even at substantially high counting rates. As a result, the need for a dead time calibration procedure prior to signal integration with the analog signal is eliminated, reducing uncertainty in the final integrated signal, and even in the retrieval result. The backscattering result of the comparison between this module and a transient recorder indicates that a more precise performance can be acquired benefiting from this hardware upgrading.
ISSN:1559-128X
2155-3165
DOI:10.1364/AO.515523