A compact and cost-effective NIR-VIS-UV lidar echo emulator (LEE) was designed and manufactured as a compact breadboard. The LEE is an application-specific optical pulse shaper delivering a short lidar return (echo) in the ns range overlapped with a long lidar return in the µs range with a repetition rate from 100 Hz – 500 Hz. The short echo power levels are in the range from 0.2–200 nW, whereas the long echo powers are from 0.1–25 pW.