Patent ID: 7814783

Claim:
A monostatic sodar system for generating information about atmospheric parameters over an altitude range, comprising: at least three peripheral transmitter-receiver pairs arranged substantially equidistant on a circle, wherein the transmitter and receiver of each of said peripheral pairs are tilted radially outward with respect to the circle at an angle to the vertical; wherein each transmitter and receiver comprises an acoustic transducer, and acoustic reflector and a surrounding baffle such that acoustic echoes returned from the atmosphere resulting from acoustic transmissions of one transmitter are preferentially received by the receiver of the respective transmitter-receiver pair relative to all other receivers; and signal processing means connected to each transmitter-receiver pair and adapted to: cause at least one transmitter of a transmitter-receiver pair to transmit an encoded acoustic chirp of at least 100 ms duration into the atmosphere, process signals received by the receive of the respective pair during the transmission of said chirp and for a time interval thereafter so as to derive information indicative of said atmospheric parameters with respect to altitude.