Improvement of accuracy of meteorological objects velocity unambiguous measurement in Doppler weather radars with staggered pulse repetition times

Abstract

In this article we investigate the procedures intended for meteorological objects (MO) mean radial velocity unambiguous estimation in pulse Doppler weather radars with constant and staggered pulse repetition times (PRT). It has been demonstrated that the fulfillment of the requirements to the unambiguous velocity measurement range by means of PRT staggering can be accompanied by the undesirable increase of velocity estimation errors. The causes, which yield this drawback in the known algorithms of velocity unambiguous measurement [1–4], have been determined. We demonstrate the possibility to decrease this drawback using modified estimation of the radial velocity. An influence of various factors (namely staggering principle; the width of the spectrum and the order of autoregressive process, which approximates weather echoes; training sample size; and the variant of final velocity estimation) on the accuracy of modified estimation of radial velocity has been investigated. Reasonable parameters of modified procedure and scheme for its practical implementation have been proven.