New Lidar Product: the MiniMPL launched by Sigma Space

Single box, one man operation, fast field deployment for the lidar market

Sigma Space Corp. launched a new Micro Pulse Lidar during the Air & Waste Management Association International Conference in China, May 10-14, 2010.

The new instrument, named MiniMPL, has all the electronics integrated with optics in one single box and it is contained in a 24x30x48 cm enclosure. The 16 kg weight of the full instrument can be managed by a single operator. It is optimized for the near range (up to 10 km) of the atmosphere, and is therefore well suited for Atmospheric Boundary Layer measurements.

Portability has been one of our most recognized achievements in MPL technology advancement, said Savy Mathur, Program Manager of MPL Systems at Sigma. We are responding to the increasing demand for an even smaller and cost-effective device. We are proud to introduce this enabling tool for environmental diagnostics and meteorological applications. This is a true one person set-up instrument perfectly suited for fast field deployment.

To obtain this convenient size we reduced the so called power-aperture product. The result is an even more compact lidar, that inherits all the attractive features of MPL-4B, like a robust optical train and a fiber-coupled detector," stated Yunhui Zheng, the Senior Optical Engineer who leads MiniMPL project in Sigma.

Micro Pulse Lidar systems have been produced by Sigma since 2004. Sigma MPL systems have been selected for the NASA global aerosol network "MPLNET" and for the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program.