Comparison of time‐ and frequency‐domain techniques for wind velocity estimation using multiple‐receiver MF radar data

Abstract

Multiple‐receiver MF radar returns from the mesosphere are used to investigate the relationship between spaced antenna (SA), radar interferometry (RI), and imaging Doppler interferometry (IDI) wind estimation techniques. Our results show that frequency‐domain (RI and IDI) and time‐domain (SA) techniques yield almost identical results under high SNR conditions suitable for SA full correlation analysis (FCA).

Comparisons of full correlation analysis (FCA) and imaging Doppler interferometry (IDI) winds using the Buckland Park MF radar

“…Franke et al, 1990;Meek and Manson, 1987;Brown et al, 1995;Turek et al, 1995Turek et al, , 1998, while the ESP alignment showed similar agreement to that of Vandepeer and Reid (1995a) between 70 and 84 km. Despite this agreement Holdsworth and Reid (1995b) were careful not to suggest that the volume scatter was applicable experimentally, or that the interferometric techniques would fail experimentally.…”

“…Furthermore, they advocate the use of an extra receiving antenna in order to calculate the normalized phase discrepancy as a further criterion. In contrast, Franke et al (1990) successfully applied interferometric analyses without use of any single scatterer criterion. The "single scatterer" and "volume scatter" situation assumed by the FCA represent limiting cases of the type of scattering mechanisms expected for MF radars.…”

“…The small spacing was chosen for IDI to reduce the possibility of angle of arrival (AOA) ambiguities resulting from use of spacings exceeding λ/2. The IDI analysis implemented is almost identical to that of Franke et al (1990). The motivation for using this analysis was twofold.…”

“…One class of interferometric techniques consist of the "Doppler-sorted imaging" analyses (e.g. Adams et al, 1985;Meek and Manson, 1987;Franke et al, 1990). These analyses use cross-spectral phase information resulting from Doppler sorting to locate discrete scattering positions for each Doppler frequency, and then combine the scattering positions and Doppler frequency information to determine the 3-D wind velocity.…”

“…There has been little attempt to theoretically analyze the imaging interferometric techniques due to the difficulty in theoretically modeling unsmoothed crossspectra (e.g. Franke et al, 1990). Briggs (1995) used the FCA theoretical model to investigate the imaging interferometric analyses in the volume scatter situation.…”