Distributed sensing for atmospheric probing: An improved concept of laser firefly clustering

In this paper, we present an improved concept of "Laser Firefly Clustering" for atmospheric probing, elaborating upon previous published work. The laser firefly cluster is a mobile, flexible and versatile distributed sensing system, whose purpose is to profile the chemical and particulate composition of the atmosphere for pollution monitoring, meteorology, detection of contamination and other aims. The fireflies are deployed in situ at the altitude of interest, and evoke a backscatter response form aerosols and molecules in the immediate vicinity using a coded laser signal. In the improved system a laser transmitter and one imaging receiver telescope are placed at a base station, while sophisticated miniature distributed sensors (fireflies), are deployed in the atmosphere. The fireflies are interrogated by the base station laser, and emit non-coded probing signals in response. The backscatter signal is processed on the firefly and the transduced data is transmitted to the imaging receiver on the ground. These improvements lead to better performance at lower energy cost and expand the scope of application of the innovative concept of laser firefly clustering. A numerical example demonstrates the potential of the novel system.