System Design for a Spaceborne Cloud Radar
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Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Im, E..
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It is well-documented (Hitschfeld and Bordan 1954, Meneghini 1978, Haddad et al 1993) that there are significant ambiguites inherent in the determination of a particular vertical rain intensity profile from a given time profile of radar echo powers measured by a downward-looking (spaceborne or airborne) radar at a single attenuating frequency.
This paper presents some crucial design parameters and a strawman system design for a nadir-looking 94-GHz spaceborne cloud profiling radar.
The NASA/JPL Airborne Rain Mapping Radar (ARMAR) was deployed for rainfall observations during TOGA/COARE on the NASA DC-8 aircraft. A total of approx. 30 hours of rain profiling measurements were collected over the Western Pacific Ocean during January and February 1993.
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A new airborne rain-mapping radar (ARMAR) has been developed by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for operation on the NASA Ames DC-8 aircraft. The radar operates at 13.8 GHz, the frequency to be used by the radar on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). ARMAR simulates the TRMM radar geometry by looking downward and scanning its antenna in the cross-track direction. This basic compatibility between ARMAR and TRMM allows ARMAR to provide information useful for the TRMM radar design, for rain retrieval algorithm development, and for postlaunch calibration. ARMAR has additional capabilities, including multiple polarization, Doppler velocity measurement, and a radiometer channel for brightness temperature measurement. The system has been tested in both ground-based and airborne configurations. This paper describes the design of the system and shows results of field tests.
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We describe a computationally efficient nearly-optimal Bayesian algorithm to estimate rain profiles, given a radar reflectivity profile at a single attenuating wavelength.
An approach for reducing the ambiguity in the retrieved rainfall profile from spaceborne rain radar is to use the path integrated attenuation as a constraint.
Several algorithms to calculate a rain-rate profile from a single-frequency air- or space-borne radar backscatter profile and a given path-integrated attenuation have been proposed.
It is well-known that there are significant deterministic ambiguities inherent in trying to determine the particular rain rate profile which produced some given sequence of air- or space-borne radar echo powers at a single attenuating frequency. We quantify these ambiguities mathematically, and examine their effect on various proposed rain-rate profile retrieval algorithms. When the given data consist of a single radiometer measurement together with a single-look-angle single-frequency set of range-compressed echo powers, we show that several substantially different rain profiles can realistically be considered solutions. On the other hand, if the data consist of a single-look-angle two-frequency set of echo powers, the inversion problem generically has a unique solution. We note that traditional 'back-of-the-envelope' arguments can be quite misleading in assessing the extent of the ambiguity, even in the simplest cases.
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There are significant inherent ambiguities when one tries to determine a particular vertical rain intensity profile from a given time profile of radar echo powers measured by a downward-looking (spaceborne or airborne) radar at a single attenuating frequency. In this paper, we quantify these ambiguities mathematically, and examine their effects on the performance of rain-rate retrieval algorithms initially proposed for use by the Precipitation Radar of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM).
The pulse compression system for an airborne rain mapping rada is described. This system uses time domain weighting of the transmit pulse and is able to achive a pulse compression sidelobe level of -55 dB. This is significantly lower than any values previously reported in the open literature.
The use of spaceborne rain radars for global and tropical precipitation mapping can provide significant information for atmospheric and climatic studies. Several key design issues for such a spaceborne rain radar are presented. Attention is also given to the design and development of an airborne rain mapping radar that will be used to support the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission. The system characteristics and expected measurement performance are summarized.
A 13.8 GHz linear frequency-modulated pulse compression radar electronics system for spaceborne and airborne radar rain mapping applications has been built and tested. Preliminary test results indicate that the far range sidelobes can be suppressed to the desired -60 B level in the laboratory environment.