Performance analysis of lidar for smart wind turbines

In the technology of smart wind turbine, one of the fundamental requirements is the availability of real-time data of wind speed. The lidar anemometry has several advantages over the conventional ones, especially in the remote marine environment. Thus it may become an important component in the future offshore wind farms. Toward practical applications, the impact of atmospheric interference on optical signals must be well understood first. In this paper, the performance of a generic lidar subject to turbulence and fog is investigated. Several closed-form metrics for evaluating performance are derived. Numerical examples are presented.