Patent ID: 6847437

Claim:
An air speed longitudinal laser anemometer for use on board an aircraft to measure an airspeed of the aircraft, comprising: at least one laser source; an optical emission and reception system for emitting a laser beam coming from the source towards particles in suspension in the air outside the aircraft and for receiving and transmitting radiation back-scattered by the particles; an optical mixer for mixing a reference laser beam, representing the beam emitted by the optical system, with the radiation received and transmitted by the optical system; a photosensitive detector for detecting the energy of the radiation at the output of the mixer; an electronic processing system for calculating the relative velocity of the medium in motion with respect to the anemometer as a function of the frequency components present in the output signal of the detector; the optical emission and reception system as well as the mixer are carried by a same support, the laser source is located remotely from the source and is connected to the optical system an optical fiber, and the detector is located remotely from the support and connected to the output of the mixer by an optical fiber, the main emission channel of the emission and reception system carried by the support being produced with the aid of unguided optics.