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In this paper, a dual-polarization weather radar echo signal simulation method is proposed for the evaluation of the performance enhancement of dual-polarization weather radar systems, the optimization of signal processing algorithms and the improvement of scanning strategies. The actual weather radar base data are used in the simulation as the reference weather scene, which avoids using a complex algorithm for weather modeling. Moreover, based on radar weather equations, the radar system parameters are added into the radar echo signal modeling to establish the relationship between the simulated echo signal and radar system. As a result, the final simulated echo signal not only shows both the time and frequency domain characteristics of the weather target, but also includes the effects of the important performance of the dual-polarization weather radar system. In addition, to evaluate the performance of range ambiguity mitigation using phase coding and batch working modes, two different simulation methods for the radar signal are established on the method above; one is for batch working mode with long-PRT (pulse repetition time) and short-PRT transmission and receiving, and the other is for phase-coded mode with phase-coded transmission and phase-uncoded receiving. Under the same weather scene, the observation of these two different methods of range ambiguity mitigation are simulated and compared. Results show that the performance of the phase coding mode for mitigating range ambiguity is better than that of the batch mode. Obviously, the simulation method can be used to directly show the observation of different algorithms for mitigation range ambiguity under the same weather process, and quickly compare and evaluate the algorithm’s performance, which is not possible for real radars.

Velocity ambiguity is one of the main challenges in accurately measuring velocity for the future Geostationary Spaceborne Doppler Weather Radar (GSDWR) due to its short wavelength. The aim of this work was to provide a novel velocity dealiasing method for frequency diversity for the future implementation of GSDWR. Two different carrier frequencies were transmitted on the adjacent pulse-pair and the order of the pulse-pair was exchanged during the transmission of the next pulse-pair. The Doppler phase shift between these two adjacent pulses was estimated based on the technique of the frequency diversity pulse-pair (FDPP), and Doppler velocity was estimated on the sum of the Doppler phase within the adjacent pulse repetition time (PRT). From the theoretical result, the maximum unambiguous velocity estimated by FDPP is only decided by the interval time of the two adjacent pulses and radar wavelength. An echo signal model on frequency diversity was established to simulate echo signals of the GSDWR to verify the extension of the maximum unambiguous velocity and the accuracy of the velocity estimation for FDPP used on GSDWR. The study demonstrates that the FDPP algorithm can extend the maximum unambiguous velocity greater than the Stagger PRT method and the unambiguous range and velocity are no longer limited by the chosen value of pulse repetition frequency (PRF). In the Ka band, the maximum unambiguous velocity can be extended to 105 m/s when the interval time is 10 μs and most velocity estimation biases are less than 0.5 m/s.

The transmission and storage of weather radar products will be an important problem for future weather radar applications. The aim of this work is to provide a solution for real-time transmission of weather radar data and efficient data storage. By upgrading the capabilities of radar, the amount of data that can be processed continues to increase. Weather radar compression is necessary to reduce the amount of data for transmission and archiving. The characteristics of weather radar data are not considered in general-purpose compression programs. The sparsity and data redundancy of weather radar data are analyzed. A lossless compression of weather radar data based on prediction coding is presented, which is called spatial and temporal prediction compression (STPC). The spatial and temporal correlations in weather radar data are utilized to improve the compression ratio. A specific prediction scheme for weather radar data is given, while the residual data and motion vectors are used to replace the original values for entropy coding. After this, the Level-II product from CINRAD SA is used to evaluate STPC. Experimental results show that the STPC achieves a better performance than the general-purpose compression programs, with the STPC yield being approximately 26% better than the next best approach.

Surface clutter interference will be one of the important problems for the future of geostationary spaceborne weather radar (GSWR). The aim of this work is to provide some numerical analyses on surface clutter interference and part of the performance evaluation for the future implementation of GSWR. The received powers of rain echoes, land and sea surfaces from a radar scattering volume are calculated numerically based on the derived radar equations, assuming a uniform rain layer and appropriate land and sea surface scattering models. An antenna pattern function based on a Bessel curve and Taylor weighting is considered to approximate the realistic spherical antenna of a GSWR. The power ratio of the rain echo signal to clutter (SCR) is then used to evaluate the extension of surface clutter interference. The study demonstrates that the entire region of surface clutter interference in GSWR will be wider than those in tropical rainfall measuring mission precipitation radar (TRMM PR). Most strong surface clutter comes from the antenna mainlobe, and the decrease of clutter contamination through reducing the level of the antenna sidelobe and range sidelobe are not obvious. In addition, the clutter interference is easily affected by rain attenuation in the Ka-band. When rain intensity is greater than 10 mm/h, most of rain echoes at off-nadir scanning angles will not be interfered by surface clutter.