Abstract
Ground-based multichannel microwave radiometers can observe the atmospheric microwave radiation brightness temperature and continuously provide temperature and humidity profiles of the troposphere. At present, microwave radiometers are operated in many countries for monitoring climate and meteorological phenomena, and there have been many microwave radiometers of this kind presently implemented in China, but they lack a unified monitor for their operational condition, which is necessary if they are taken as a network. For this reason, a real-time monitoring receiving system of radiometer is fundamental and important. In order to check the system stability and the antenna performances, this paper studied the feasibility of applying the solar signals to monitor the antenna alignment, antenna pattern and stability of a radiometer system in working for operational field applications. An experiment was performed and the results from the analysis of the annual variation features with long-term solar observation data at four frequencies, 22.235, 26.235, 30.000 and 51.250 GHz, show that an antenna pattern retrieved from solar observations agrees well with that retrieved from the traditional method. In addition, a daily analysis of the solar signals in online data of a radiometer can be used for monitoring the alignment of the antenna and the stability of the ground-based microwave radiometer system.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilGround-based multichannel microwave radiometers (GMRs) can continuously observe atmospheric radiation brightness temperature (TB) in K- and V-bands, and provide valuable data on the temperature, water vapor, cloud liquid and humidity structures of the troposphere [1,2,3,4]
Darlington et al detected the method with operational weather radars and the results showed that the solar radiation can be used for health automatic checks of a radar [11]
This paper presents what we have done with the solar method to determine the GMR antenna pattern and to monitor antenna alignment of GMR
Summary
To ensure high observation accuracy of atmospheric radiation, it is calibrated by liquid nitrogen (LN2), hot load, noise diode and the Tipping curve method. These calibrations can provide an absolute accuracy of at least 0.5 K [15]. The period considered in this study extends from December 2019 to January 2021. During this period, the GMR undergoes regular maintenance, including antenna radome cleaning, sanity checks and absolute LN2 calibration.
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