Performance evaluation of a floating Doppler wind lidar buoy in mediterranean near-shore conditions

Abstract

This paper departs from a preliminary near-shore measurement test campaign hold at El Pont del Petroli (PdP), Barcelona (Spain) where measurements from a Doppler wind-lidar buoy (the ”floating” lidar) are cross-examined against an on-shore reference lidar. From this framework the methodological analysis to intercompare two such lidars in terms of the retrieved Horizontal Wind Speed (HWS) - as key variable - is presented along with an overview of the signal-processing block diagram. Central to this work is to introduce the main error indicators (e.g., bias, RMSE, determination coefficient, absolute error and scatter plots) used to assess the performance of the floating lidar in the campaign. Finally, it is shown that even a basic smoothing procedure on the retrieved 1-s HWS time series is enough to enhance the determination coefficient against the reference lidar Turbulence Intensity (TI).