ONERA and Leosphere are associated in the development of a new scanning Lidar with a range of over 10 km. The system was deployed during a field campaign lasting one month at the Toulouse airport, in order to qualify the contribution of the lidar to the knowledge of air-mass dynamics.
This action took place within the context of the European project UFO (UltraFast wind sensOrs), coordinated by Thales Air System, whose objective is to promote the development of technological innovations that could reduce the danger of wake vortices and wind shear over airports.
The campaign was aimed at validating the performance, over a 10 km radius, of a new wind speed and turbulence mapping lidar in an airport environment. This lidar consists of a new high power fibre laser source developed by ONERA and integrated into the scanning Windcube® of the company Leosphere (see photo).
ONERA’s laser source is integrated into Leosphere’s Windcube ®
The campaign results will be used to analyse the complementarity of lidar measurements (ONERA-Leosphere) and radar measurements (Thales) under a variety of weather conditions and to validate the algorithms for measuring the EDR (Eddy Dissipation Rate), which is a key parameter to determine wake vortex life.
Wind map obtained by the ONERA-Leosphere lidar
