Measurement uncertainty analysis in incoherent Doppler lidars by a new scattering approach

We need to examine the uncertainty added to the Doppler measurement process of atmospheric wind speeds of a practical incoherent detection lidar. For this application, the multibeam Fizeau wedge has the advantage over the Fabry-Perot interferometer of defining linear fringe patterns. Unfortunately, the convenience of using the transfer function for angular spectrum transmission has not been available because the nonparallel mirror geometry of Fizeau wedges. In this paper, we extent the spatial-frequency arguments used in Fabry-Perot etalons to the Fizeau geometry by using a generalized scattering matrix method based on the propagation of optical vortices. Our technique opens the door to consider complex, realistic configurations for any Fizeau-based instrument.