On-Board Axial Detection of Wake Vortices using a 2-mu m LiDAR

Douxchamps, Damien Lugan, Sébastien [UCL] Verschueren, Yannick [UCL] Mutuel, Laurence Macq, Benoît [UCL] Chihara, Kunihiro

This paper describes the first successful attempt to detect wake vortices axially using an on-board infrared pulsed Doppler LiDAR. On-board axial detection is more complex than the classic ground-based tangential approach, because the axial air speed in vortices is low and the atmospheric particle density is reduced, yielding a poorer SNR. To provide meaningful results in such unfavorable conditions we have developed a new flexible signal processing method based on a two-primitive model fitting the spectrum of the Doppler return. This new spectral estimation successfully detects wake vortices with an admissible SNR that is lower than other on-board state-of-the-art approaches. It was validated through flight tests.