Eyesafe coherent wind LIDAR based on a coherently-beam-combined pulsed laser source

This work compares the performances of the wind LIDAR driven by a single-amplifier (30 W peak power) and the same wind LIDAR driven by two combined amplifiers (30 W peak power total output). Coherent beam combination is a scalable technique for improving output power of single-frequency pulse sources used in LIDAR and other field. Those preliminary results, showing the compatibility of coherent beam combining with coherent wind LIDAR, will be presented, as well as results at higher power. Coherent beam combination opens the way for improvement of LIDAR reliability and measurement range.