Dual-wavelength correlation measurements with an airborne pulsed carbon dioxide lidar system

Abstract
Dual-wavelength correlation data are presented for ground-level and airborne measurements of topographic and ocean backscatter near the 9.5μm wavelength. Data were acquired with a pulsed carbon dioxide, dual-laser, dual-wavelength lidar system. The best system performance gave a dual-wavelength uncorrelated noise component of 2.8% and 9% standard deviation for ground-based and airborne data, respectively. This sets one limit on lidar measurement accuracy with a single pulse pair.