In this paper we describe lidar sensing techniques for determining the dissipation rate of turbulent energy using a cw Doppler lidar, based on extracting information on the measured characteristics from: a) the Doppler spectrum width; b) temporal structure functions and from time spectra of the measured rate fluctuations; c) spatial structure function of the rate computed using lidar data obtained when conically scanning about vertical axis with the laser beam. The potentials of the above techniques for reconstructing the profiles of the dissipation rate in the atmospheric boundary layer are analyzed. We compared the results of reconstruction of altitude profiles of the dissipation rate from the Doppler lidar data by different methods as well as with the available data of direct measurements.