Compact atmospheric lidar instrument (C-ATLID)

The instrument design and performance are described in this paper. C-ATLID is a backscatter LIDAR using a solid-state Nd-YAG (1.06 micrometers wavelength) and a 0.6 m diameter telescope. A linear scanning (+/- 23) is used in order to achieve the required swathwidth (700 Km). The selected concept consists in a lightweight scanning telescope associated to a contra-rotative flywheel. The detector is a silicon Avalanche Photodiode. The instrument fits on a half nadir sub-panel of the ENVISAT platform, and the thermal control is designed to be independent of the neighbor instruments.