Aerosol Detection Methods in Lidar-Based Atmospheric Profiling

A compact light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system provides aerosols profile measurements by identifying the aerosol scattering ratio as function of the altitude. The aerosol scattering ratios are used to obtain multiple aerosol intensive ratio parameters known as backscatter color ratio, depolarization ratio and lidar ratio. The aerosol ratio parameters are known to vary with aerosol type, size, and shape. Different methods in the literature are employed for detection and classification of aerosol from the measurements. In this paper, a comprehensive review for aerosol detection methods is presented. In addition, results of implemented methods of quantifying aerosols in the atmosphere on real data are compared and presented showing how the backscatter color, depolarization and lidar ratios vary with presence of aerosols in the atmosphere.