Radar beam‐ and range‐weighting effects on three‐dimensional radar imaging for the atmosphere

Abstract

[1] Multiple-receiver and multiple-frequency radar imaging techniques used with VHF atmospheric radar can improve, respectively, angular and range resolutions of the atmospheric irregularity structure inside the radar volume. In addition to the imaging method itself, calibration of the imaging is also crucial to yield a better visualization of the irregularity structure. In this paper, the three-dimensional radar imaging using multiple receivers and multiple frequencies simultaneously is demonstrated on the basis of numerical simulation with the Capon method. More than previous works did, radar beam and range weighting effects on the imaging were examined in this study. Beam weighting effect on angular brightness distribution of the scattering region is apparent, but it gives different impacts on the range imaging as accompanying with the range weighting effect: the higher the range position of the scattering region is, the smaller the synthetic influence of both weighting effects will be. Beam weighting effect also causes a range-shortening effect for a localized scattering region, which should be considered in interpreting the shift of range brightness distribution with angular location of the target. Moreover, it is demonstrated that adaptable beam width is effectual to recover a two-blob structure and a wavy layer. An experimental case was also investigated to demonstrate the need of correcting beam weighting effect using adaptable beam width; meanwhile, it suggests that an adaptable range weighting function could be helpful to a further amendment of the three-dimensional imaging.Citation: Chen, J.-S., C.-H. Chen, and J. Furumoto (2011), Radar beam-and range-weighting effects on three-dimensional radar imaging for the atmosphere, Radio Sci., 46, RS6014,

A study of some FMCW radar algorithms for target location at low frequencies

“…One obtains sharper peaks by using a longer sampling interval (chirp time T ) but the bandwidth increases accordingly. A way to handle this problem is to use Capon's filtering method [ Capon , ; Palmer et al , ; Chen et al , ] to analyze the received signal. The method is preferably formulated in terms of a complex signal s LF c .…”