Optical scintillometer wake vortex detection system
US5838007A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Jun 23, 1997 |
| Grant date | Nov 17, 1998 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jun 23, 2017 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG01N21/41
- WIPO fieldMeasurement
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
An optical scintillometer is provided which is operative to measure atmospheric wake vortex turbulence intensity up to a distance of ten kilometers. The optical scintillometer provides real time continuous measurements of aircraft generated wake vortex turbulence intensity in the field of operations employing a transmitter, receiver, and digital processing circuitry. The signal is digitized before comparison with a threshold to eliminate events attributable to objects moving through the path of the optical transmitter and receiver. The system is thereby able to perform calculations to adjust the first order log-amplitude variance function in the saturation regime. An extremely important aspect of the invention is the digitization of the signal and its comparison with the threshold signal. Because a digital signal is compared with a threshold signal level, invalid signal inputs are excluded from the calculation of path-averaged turbulence intensity. The exclusion of such signals assures the data quality in computing the refractive turbulence intensity even when there is an interruption of the infrared beam. This feature is critical for the data processing. Data produced when the opt…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.