Angular misalignment contribution to practical heterodyne lidars in the turbulent atmosphere.

The simulation of beam propagation is used to examine the sensitivity to misalignments of a practical heterodyne lidar because of the presence of refractive turbulence. At shorter wavelengths, and under general atmospheric conditions, the performance of a realistic instrument is never well described by either of the ideal monostatic and bistatic rrangements when misalignment is taking into consideration.