Synthetic Aperture Weather Radar

Kurzfassung

The work, sponsored by SELEX-GEMATRONIK, focuses on the implementation of aperture synthesis for ground-based coherent radars. Such systems can take advantage of the circular trajectory of the antenna phase centre to synthesize an antenna aperture useful for resolution improvement. The performance of azimuth compression algorithms is analysed in detail for the case of radar meteorological targets (precipitation and clutter). Advanced array signal processing techniques for obtaining super-resolution imaging of coherent targets are also investigated. A quite unique experimental setup allowed the comparison between two ground-based SAR systems with regards to resolution of coherent (clutter) and partially coherent (precipitation) targets. Doppler velocity and spectral width estimation, as well as accuracy of reflectivity measurements are also addressed.