La utilización práctica del efecto Doppler en la emisión láser fue propuesta desde los inicios del desarrollo de los láseres en los años sesenta. Sólo en los años ochenta la investigación realizada pudo salir del laboratorio y dar lugar a la fabricación de aparatos de medida de velocidad comerciales. A partir de los noventa estos aparatos se popularizaron rápidamente. Actualmente se utilizan medidores de velocidad láser por efecto Doppler en múltiples aplicaciones, entre las que sobresale la medida de velocidad de fluidos, para estudios aéreo e hidrodinámicos. Sus características únicas, como la precisión obtenida en la medida, su alta resolución espacial y el carácter no intrusivo, sólo han comenzado recientemente a tener rivales de consideración, como pueden ser la velocimetría de imagen de partículas (PIV). También la medida de velocidades de móviles sólidos comienza a resultar, con el abaratamiento general de los componentes opto-electrónicos, un objetivo para muchas empresas. Entre las aplicaciones de este tipo se contemplan el control de velocidad de los vehículos en carretera y el control de procesos industriales del ramo textil, papelero y deempresas fabricantes de cables, entre otros. Empresas europeas y americanas, como Dantec Electronik y TSI, por citar las más representativas, comercializan aparatos LDA de propósito general de altas prestaciones. Hasta la fecha estos sistemas sólo podían ser adquiridos por importantes centros de investigación o grandes empresas, debido a su elevado coste. El futuro comercial de la velocimetría láser Doppler exige la fabricación de aparatos más económicos y adaptados a las necesidades del cliente. Muchos de los sistemas actuales son voluminosos,difíciles de manejar y con potencias de trabajo elevadas. Se está llevando a cabo un importante trabajo para conseguir reducir el tamaño y coste de los equipos sin perder sus principales prestaciones. Asimismo la alta velocidad y capacidad de cálculo de los ordenadores personales actuales debe hacer innecesaria la inclusión de procesadores específicos para estos equipos.Presentamos el diseño y construcción de un sistema integral de medida de dos componentes de la velocidad, sistema 2D-LDA, para aplicaciones industriales e hidrodinámicas de baja potencia. Siguiendo la filosofía delineada arriba, el diseño de nuestro sistema LDA fue realizado utilizando únicamente una fuente laser y un módulo detector. Los sistemas LDA de medida de dos componentes de velocidad comercialmente disponibles, por el contrario, emplean dos longitudes de onda óptica y dos fotodetectores independientes. Las emisiones azul y verde típicas de los láseres de ion-Ar son las longitudes de onda a menudo elegidas en este tipo de medidas. Por otra parte, se ha empleado los dos canales de entrada de una tarjeta de adquisición de uso general para realizar el disparo multinivel. Esta configuración permite trabajar en cada momento con la parte de señal burst teóricamente más adecuada, con mayor valor de relación señal a ruido.Este trabajo ha sido financiado por la CICYT Proyecto PETRI 95-0249-OP:REALIZACIÓN DE SISTEMAS LÁSER PORTÁTILES DE MEDIDA DE VELOCIDAD POR EFECTO DOPPLER (LDA-LDV) DE BAJO COSTE PARA APLICACIONES INDUSTRIALES E HIDRODINÁMICAS. / The practical use of the Doppler effect at optical wavelengths was proposed at the early beginning of the development of the laser, in the sixties. However, it was only in the eighties when the results of the experimental work could finally get out of the laboratories, and the first Laser Velocimeters were commercially available. In the nineties this kind of systems became rapidly popular. Nowadays the Laser Velocimeters based on the Doppler frequency shift find a lot of important applications, especially in some industrial processes and in hydrodynamic and aerodynamic research.The unique characteristics of the Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) only recently have encountered a rival technique in the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), for applications on fluids. The main features of LDV systems are the accuracy and the speed of the measurements, the high spatial resolution and, of course, the non-intrusive character of the technique. Moreover this kind of systems present advantages not only in fluid applications: actually it can compete with the microwave radar in the estimation of the velocity of solid targets. This becomes possible due to theprogressive reduction of prices of optoelectronic devices and the improvement of its performances. The monitoring of the traffic velocity and the control of machinery in the manufacture of paper, wires and cables or thread can be mentioned among these applications.European an American companies, as Dantek Electronic or TSI, to mention the two most representative, commercialize high performance general-purpose LDV systems. Up to the date these instruments are sizeable and expensive, and its use requires some special training. There is not doubt that the future market of the LDV systems goes through a substantial decrease of prices and, indeed, through the possibility of custom-built designs. The potential number of users would increase then in an important manner. Many efforts are now being devoted by researchers in that direction. Moreover, the important improvement of capabilities of the desktop computers makes unnecessary the special electronic processors that, up to now, have been provided by the manufacturers of LDV systems as a part of them.In this Thesis the design and realization of a complete Laser Doppler Anemometer is presented. The system can measure two components of a fluid velocity (2D-LDA) and originally it was conceived to be used in industrial and hydrodynamics applications.Following the philosophy outlined above, the design of our LDA system was performed with only one laser source and one detector module. The common commercially available LDAs, on the contrary, designed to measure two components of velocity, use two different optical wavelengths and two independent photodiodes.On the other hand, a general-purpose acquisition card with two input channels has been used to implement a multilevel trigger. The configuration performed here permits to work in each moment with the part of the burst having the best signal to noise ratio.This work has been supported by the Spanish Government, CICYT project PETRI 95-0249-OP.

The increasing need for range-resolved aerosol and water-vapour atmospheric observation networks worldwide has given rise to multi-spectral LIDARs (Light Detection and Ranging, a synonym of laser radar) as advanced remote sensing sensors. This Ph.D. presents the design, integration and analysis of the new 6-channel multispectral elastic/Raman LIDAR for aerosol and water-vapour content monitoring developed at the Remote Sensing Lab. (RSLAB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). It is well known that the combination of at least three elastic and two Raman nitrogen channels are sufficient to enable retrieval of the optical and microphysical properties of aerosols with a key impact on climate change variables. The UPC lidar is part of the EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network) -GALION (Global Atmospheric Watch Atmospheric Lidar Observation Network), a ground-based continental network including more than 28 stations. Currently, only 8 of the 28 EARLINET stations are of such advanced type. This Ph.D. specifically focuses on: (1) Concept link-budget instrument design and overlap factor assessment. The former includes opto-atmospheric parameter modelling and assessment of backscattered power and SNR levels, and maximum system range for the different reception channels (3 elastic, and 2 aerosol and 1 water-vapour Raman channels, ultraviolet to near-infrared bands). The latter studies the laser-telescope crossover function (or overlap function) by means of a novel ray-tracing Gaussian model. The problem of overlap function computation and its near-range sensitivity for medium size aperture (f/10, f/11) bi-axial tropospheric lidar systems using both detector and fiber-optics coupling alternatives at the telescope focal-plane is analysed using this new ray-tracing approach, which provides a much simpler solution than analytical-based methods. Sensitivity to laser divergence, field-lens and detector/fiber positions, and fiber¿s numerical aperture is considered. (2) Design and opto-mechanical implementation of the 6-channel polychromator (i.e., the spectrally selective unit in reception). Design trade-offs concerning light collimation, end-to-end transmissivity, net channel responsivity, and homogeneous spatial light distribution onto the detectors¿ active area discussed. (3) System integration and validation. This third part is two fold: On one hand, first-order backscatter-coefficient error bounds (a level-1 data product) for the two-component elastic lidar inversion algorithm are estimated for both random (observation noise) and systematic error sources (user¿s uncertainty in the backscatter-coefficient calibration, and user¿s uncertainty in the aerosol extinction-to-backscatter lidar ratio). On the other hand, the multispectral lidar so far integrated is described at both hardware and control software level. Statistical validation results for the new UPC lidar (today in routine operation) in the framework of SPALI-2010 intercomparison campaign are presented as part of EARLINET quality assurance / optimisation of instruments¿ program. The methodology developed in the first part of this Ph.D. has successfully been applied to the specification case study of the IFAE/UAB lidar system, which will be installed and operated at the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory. Finally, specs for automated unmanned unattended lidar operation with service times close to 365/24 are presented at the end of this Ph.D. in response to the increasing demand for larger observation times and availability periods of lidar stations.