Principle of Doppler Weather Radar

Term： RADAR （Radio Detection And Ranging）

What a Doppler weather radar can do ?

Bands, Wavelength, frequency:

C

f ( C=3.0e10 cm/s, f: 1/s)
Radar bands and corresponding frequency bands (Rinehart, 2001).
Radar Bands Frequency Wavelength

HF 3-30 Mhz 100-10 m

VHF 30-300 MHz 10-1 m

UHF 300-1000 MHz 1-0.3 m

L 1-2 GHz 30-15 cm

S 2-4 GHz 15-8 cm

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 C 4-8 GHz 8-4 cm

X 8-12 GHz 4-2.5 cm

Ku 12-18 GHz 2.5-1.7 cm

K 18-27 GHz 1.7-1.2 cm

Ka 27-40 GHz 1.2-0.75 cm

W 40-300 GHz 7.5-1 mm

Why so many bands of weather radar are employed ?

World-widely used radar is S, C or X band radar for weather detection.

Base Information provided by radar(Level 1 product):
Radar Reflectivity Factor, Z
Radial Velocity, V
Velocity Spectrum Width, W/SW
Derived information(Level 2 product):
Rainfall intensity, Rainfall amount,

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 Rainfall distribution,
Wind (Horizontal, vertical),
Echo top,
Vertical Integrated liquid water content
Hail (POH, POSH,MEHS)
... …
Maximum Range for monitoring:
460 Km (WSR-88D or Cinrad/SA/SB）
300 Km (C-band),
200 Km (X-band)
20+ Km (Ka-band)
Radar System configuration

Main modules of a weather radar system:

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 Transmitter
Receiver
Antenna
Singal Processor and display

Refer to WSR-88D, the Radar system is made of RDA, RPG and

PUP
RDA: Radar Data Acquisition
RPG: Radar Product Generator
PUP: Principal User Processor

RDA: Antenna, Transmitter, Receiver, Controller

RPG: Computer + Algorithm
PUP: Computer + Interface

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 What a weather radar system looks like ?

Some Important Parameters of weather radar

Pt Peak power from Transmitter (600 kw)
τ Pulse duration (microsecond (1 μs)
PRF Pulse Repeating Frequency (1000 Hz)
λ Wave length
Θ,Φ Beam width of the antenna
Φ, θ≈73λ/D (Degree)
λ: working wavelength
D: Antenna Diameter
G Gain of the antenna (40dB)

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 G≈33000/(Φ*θ) (Φ and θ in degree)
A WSR-88D radar has a 8.5-meter (28-feet) antenna.
Φ, θ is about 1 degree, G is about 45dB
Beam of weather radar antenna
Main lobe, side lobe, beam width

Of all the above parameters, λis most important,

PRF is the second important.

Weather Radar installed in China

About 226 CINRAD totally, the following map shows
the radar installed till year 2004.

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 Examples of radar product
Radar reflectivity factor (Reflects rainfall Intensity --- rain rate)

Reflectivity Factor (dBZ)

65 55 45 35 25 15 5

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 With GIS Overlaid (please care about the text information)

Reflectivity factor and radial wind velocity

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 Scan models (PPI, RHI, V-PPI)
PPI (Plain-Position Indicator)

PPI shows the horizontal distribution of rainfall

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 RHI (Range-Height Indicator)

RHI shows the vertical structure of a storm cell

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 V-PPI（Volumetric PPI）

The V-PPI data contains 3-D information of storms

Extract CAPPI data from V-PPI data

(Constant Altitude PPI)

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 Basic processings of radar data
(1) Data display
(2) Data quality control (clutter cancelling)
(3) Radar data composition
(4) Level 2 product from radar base data
(rain rate, rainfall amount, wind field)
……

(1) 3D display

(2) Clutter filtering

Before filtering After filtering

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 (3) Radar data composite

(4) Echo top

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 (5) VCS (Vertical Cutting Section )

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 Weather radar working principle
1） Weather object position：
Range
Azimuth
Elevation
R= r*cosα Rmax=?
H = (h0+Rsinα+R2/17000 (km) )
2) Echo intensity
Scattering：
Re-emiting the incident electromagnetic wave.

Scattering characters are related to λ(working wavelength)

and partical feathers especially the size of the size of particle.

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 If s/λ<<0.1 (S: circumference of a droplet)
 Rayleigh Scattering (small particle)
If s/λ～1  Mie Scattering (large particle)
Valid for Rayleigh Scatter

Scattering feathers:

(Rayleigh scattering)

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 (Mie scattering)

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 Under Rayleigh scattering, the radar received echo
power Pr is: (Radar equation)
Pt G 2  2 h  1 1
Pr 
1 0 2 4 ln 2  2 R 2

V
i

Pt G 2  2 h  1 1
 2 2

1 0 2 4 ln 2  R

 5 m2  1 
 4 2  n( D) D 6 dD
 m 2 0

 5 m2  1
 4 2 Z
 m 2
2
3 PhG  m 2
1 
Pr  t
 n( D) D 6 dD
1024 ln 2  2 R 2 m 2  2 0

C 2
Pr  2
K Z
R
C: Radar constant
K 2 : Complex refractive index,
0.93 for water, 0.19 for dry ice/snow
Pr R 2
Z
CK 2
Z : mm6/m3 (0.001 ~ 10,000,000 )
Z  dBZ (dBZ =10*Log10Z) (-30 ~ 70)

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 Range of radar reflectivity factor for weather echoes

3) Radial velocity
Doppler effect

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 2V
fd 
 (1)
Magnitude of Doppler shift

A Doppler radar can detect the Doppler frequency fd,

so the radial velocity can be obtained by (1).
Horizontal wind and radial velocity demonstration

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 The measured radial velocity is the average of
Z-weighted radial velocity of all particles within the
sampling volume.

4) Spectrum width

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 N
1 2
W
N
 Vi  VD 
i 1

Spectrum width is a measure for the varies of particle

velocity within the sampling volume. Mathematically,
close to standard variation, denotes for hydrometer
velocity instability, or turbulence.
Currently, Product relevant to spectrum width is not
well used, because two many factors(meteorologivcal
and non-meteorological) have impact on the width. It
is hard to connect spectrum width and weather event.

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 Summary
(1) Radar ability
(2) Radar configuration
(3) Parameters
(4) Scan mode
(5) Basic processing
(6) Scattering
(7) Radar equation --- echo intensity Z
(8) Doppler effect --- radial velocity
(9) Velocity variation --- Spectrum width

Appendix:
Weather radar types
Conventional radar,
Doppler radar,
Dual polarization (polarimetric) Doppler radar,
Dual wavelength radar,
Phase-arrayed weather radar.

Vertical Coverage Pattern VCP11 and VCP21 in

WSR-88D system.
• VCP11
– 14 elevations in 5 min

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 – Contains fewest data gaps
– Used for examining nearby storms and
when significant echoes are present
– Requires a high degree of data
processing

• VCP 21
– 9 elevation scans in 6 minutes
– Adequate coverage in non-severe wx
events
– Increased data gaps
• Especially near storms

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 Question:
1. What is the of a radar antenna radome ? What is the
side-effect of the radome ?
2. Which is better, big antenna or small antenna ?
3. Thinking about the sampling volume.
4. Can birds produce echo ? what features it may
have ?
5. How to distinguish ground clutter ?
6. Can sea wave cause sea clutter ?

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