A Comparative Assessment Study of Doppler Wind Lidar Technologies: “Lidar Compass”: Technical Readiness, Performance, and Scalability to Space-Based Operation for Measuring Global Atmospheric 3D Wind Profiles: A study performed under the BAA-NOAA-3DW

With funding from NOAA NESDIS Joint Venture Project Office, BAE Systems-SMS (SMS) and the University of Colorado (CU) Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) performed a comparative assessment of measurement performance, technology readiness, mission complexity, and cost risks for multiple Doppler wind lidar (DWL) technologies in support of future NOAA 3D-Winds observations. The study goal was to provide NOAA NESDIS with information valuable for developing 3D-wind requirements for next-generation operational weather space architectures and help quantify potential performance of such 3D Winds observations to address the needs of NOAA’s next generation Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation.