A mobile vehicle lidar system has been developed and applied to detect urban air quality. On September 21 and22, 2015, particulate matter observation with mobile vehicle lidar was carried out in the Binhai New Area of Tianjin. Combined with the latitude and longitude information acquired by a GPS, the three-dimensional distribution of the aerosol extinction coefficient was presented in the experimental area. Furthermore, the source,distribution, and the transportation path of the aerosols in the area were investigated based on lidar data, local meteorological data, and backward trajectory analysis. The results show that mobile vehicle lidar can detect the atmospheric aerosols and reflect the stereoscopic distribution properties of aerosols. The potential of this vehicle lidar system provides a new scientific basis for the study of the source, distribution, and transportation of atmospheric particles.
Estimation of random errors, which are due to shot noise of photomultiplier tube(PMT) or avalanche photodiode(APD) detectors, is very necessary in lidar observation. Due to the Poisson distribution of incident electrons, there still exists a proportional relationship between standard deviation and square root of its mean value. Based on this relationship,noise scale factor(NSF) is introduced into the estimation, which only needs a single data sample. This method overcomes the distractions of atmospheric fluctuations during calculation of random errors. The results show that this method is feasible and reliable.
