The measurement error in the horizontal wind velocity with a space-borne incoherent Doppler lidar system was estimated by using modeled atmosphere and analytical calculations. The result suggested that the integrated pulse energy of more than 100J and the detector with the quantum efficiency of more than 50% are necessary to satisfy the demand of numerical weather precision. The calculated errors for coherent and incoherent Doppler lidar systems were compared with varying each resource parameter and signal-to-noise ratio. The result indicated that the coherent Doppler lidar system is more useful than the incoherent one under usual aerosol condition, while the incoherent one is useful in case of very low aerosol density.
