Visible, near-infrared dual-polarization lidar based on polarization cameras: system design, evaluation and atmospheric measurements

A visible, near-infrared (VIS-NIR) dual-polarization lidar technique employing laser diodes and polarization cameras has been designed and implemented for all-day unattended field measurements of atmospheric aerosols. The linear volume depolarization ratios (LVDR) and the offset angles can be retrieved from four-directional polarized backscattering signals at wavelengths of 458 nm and 808 nm without additional optical components and sophisticated system adjustments. Evaluations on the polarization crosstalk of the polarization camera and the offset angle have been performed in detail. A rotating linear polarizer (RLP) method based on the Stokes-Mueller formalism has been proposed and demonstrated for measuring extinction ratios of the polarization camera, which can be used to eliminate the polarization crosstalk between different polarization signals. The offset angles can be online measured with a precision of 0.1 degrees, leading to negligible measurement errors on the LVDR. One-month statistical analysis revealed a small temporal variation of the offset angles, namely -0.13 degrees +/- 0.07 degrees at 458 nm and 0.33 degrees +/- 0.09 degrees at 808 nm, indicating good system stability for long-term measurement. Atmospheric measurements have been carried out to verify the system performance and investigate aerosol optical properties. The spectral characteristics of the aerosol extinction coefficient, the color ratio, the linear particle polarization ratio (LPDR) and the ratio of LPDR were retrieved and evaluated based on one-month continuous atmospheric measurements, from which different types of aerosols can be classified. The promising results showed great potential of employing the VIS-NIR dual-polarization lidar in characterizing aerosol optical properties, discriminating aerosol types and analyzing long-range aerosol transportation. (C) 2022 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement