An innovative system for the simultaneous acquisition of analog and photon counting lidar signals.

The study of the electronics related to the acquisition of the detected signals plays an important role for the improvement of Lidar systems for atmospheric remote sensing. The spanning of the atmospheric Lidar echo signals over many decades often obliges the simultaneous use of both analog and photon counting detection during the same measurement. Thanks to the new possibilities offered by FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) electronics and the ever-increasing efficiency of DSP (digital signal processing) processors, both detection scheme can now be realized on a single electronic board able to manage even more sources simultaneously. Here, an acquisition board will be described that includes up to 5 channels simultaneously acquirable in photon counting and analog modes. This board is also able to avail itself as one of the most recent and fast data processing, storage, and communication methods, which makes it completely independent of the PCs or rack mount devices necessary to control classic type instrumentation. Experimental results obtained with this acquisition board on the Lidar systems operating at the University of Naples Federico II will be illustrated and discussed.