Development and observation of the phased array radar at X band

Abstract

A new Phased Array Radar (PAR) system for meteorological application has been developed by Toshiba Corporation and Osaka University under a grant of NICT, and installed in Osaka University, Japan in 2012. The phased array radar system developed has the unique capability of scanning the whole sky with 100m and 10 to 30 second resolution up to 60 km. The system adopts the digital beam forming technique for elevation scanning and mechanically rotates the array antenna in azimuth direction within 10 to 30 seconds. The radar transmits a broad beam of several degrees with 24 antenna elements and receives the back scattered signal with 128 elements digitizing at each elements. Then by digitally forming the beam in the signal processor, the fast scanning is realized. After the installation of the PAR system in Osaka University, the initial observation campaign was conducted in Osaka urban area with Ku-band Broad Band Radar (BBR) network, C-band weather radar, and lightning location system. The initial comparison with C band radar system shows that the developed PAR system can observe the behavior of the thunderstorm structure in much more detail than any other radar system. The observed high temporal resolution images of the severe thunderstorm are introduced, showing the potential capabilities of the PAR system. The correlation coefficient of the reflectivity in PAR with C band radar ranges from 0.6 to 0.9 as a function of the distance from the PAR.