Improving the atmospheric wind speed measured accuracy by the ground-based airglow imaging interferometer

A prototype ground based airglow imaging interferometer (GBAII) has been constructed to observe the upper atmospheric wind velocity and temperature at an altitude of 90-100 km, but the GBAII's wind speed accuracy was found to be unsatisfactory with a value of 21.0 m/s. Three theoretical aspects have been investigated to improve the accuracy, with the following finding: 1) By replacing the surface coatings of the GBAII's 6 lenses and Michelson interferometer (MI) with a new wind-speed infrared film rather than the original visible light film, the accuracy can be increased by 3.0 m/s. 2) By replacing the original charge-coupled device (CCD) with a quantum efficiency (QE) of 0.38 at the wavelength of approximately 866 nm by an electron multiplying CCD (EMCCD) with QE of 0.95, the accuracy can be increased by 6.7 m/s. By adding all the factors that improve the accuracy of the GBAII, it can be improved by 15.0 m/s, which realizes the original aim of wind speed accuracy of 6.0 m/s. Experimental results have been obtained for two aspects: 1) By replacing the surface film on the GBAII's 6 lenses and MI interface, the wind speed accuracy has been increased by 3.8 m/s. 2) A new GBAII temperature controller has been constructed to control the environmental temperature in 0.2 K steps. The results obtained by the GBAII on Dec. 6, 2013 show an average atmospheric temperature of 206.5 K, zonal wind speed of -26.8 m/s and meridional wind speed of 28.1 m/s. These results are close to those of the TIMED (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) satellite Doppler interferometer (TIDI) data collected at almost the same time.