Abstract
This paper reports the characteristics of 1μm lidar signal using Silicon Avalanche Photodiode (Si-APD) single photon-counting module. The transmitter of the lidar is a laser diode pumped Q-switched Nd: YAG laser with the wavelength of 1064 nm. The beam divergence is 0.5 mrad. The diameter of the receiver telescope is 300 mm and the field of view is 0.7 mrad. The receiver employs a photon-counting-solid state Geiger mode Si-APD module whose model number is SPCM-AQ-212 which was made by EG&G, Canada. The atmospheric observations were performed using the lidar at Tsukuba Space Center in November 7, 1997. It was very clear day and there was not a speck of cloud in the sky. Experimental results show that the distribution of received photo-electron signal from the atmosphere is a near Poisson's distribution, and signal-to-noise ratio increases proportional to the square root of accumulation.
