A time-series method to identify and correct range sidelobes in meteorological radar data

Westbrook, C. D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2889-8815 and Nicol, J. C. (2013) A time-series method to identify and correct range sidelobes in meteorological radar data. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 30 (10). pp. 2417-2424. ISSN 1520-0426 doi: 10.1175/JTECH-D-13-00063.1

Abstract/Summary

The use of pulse compression techniques to improve the sensitivity of meteorological radars has become increasingly common in recent years. An unavoidable side-effect of such techniques is the formation of ‘range sidelobes’ which lead to spreading of information across several range gates. These artefacts are particularly troublesome in regions where there is a sharp gradient in the power backscattered to the antenna as a function of range. In this article we present a simple method for identifying and correcting range sidelobe artefacts. We make use of the fact that meteorological targets produce an echo which fluctuates at random, and that this echo, like a fingerprint, is unique to each range gate. By cross-correlating the echo time series from pairs of gates therefore we can identify whether information from one gate has spread into another, and hence flag regions of contamination. In addition we show that the correlation coefficients contain quantitative information about the fraction of power leaked from one range gate to another, and we propose a simple algorithm to correct the corrupted reflectivity profile.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/34921
Identification Number/DOI	10.1175/JTECH-D-13-00063.1
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Uncontrolled Keywords	Cloud microphysics, Microwave observations, Radars/Radar observations, Remote sensing, Time series
Publisher	American Meteorological Society
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