Time Domain Signal Simulation of Weather Clutter for an Airborne Radar Based on Measured Data

Abstract

An airborne radar simulator for an X-band radar echo signal was implemented and numerically verified. The simulator can consider weather conditions over a large area and can use measured S-band data as input. A scheme is presented for the conversion of the S-band data to the X-band one. The amplitude and time delay due to weather particles can be theoretically calculated on the basis of reflectivity. The dynamics of the platform and clutter particles were modeled using the Doppler frequency shift in the echo signal. As the simulated weather area was very large, an efficient approximation method was designed for use in calculating the attenuation and time delay, which was also numerically verified. Finally, a scheme for extracting the reflectivity from the echo signal was formulated and was verified by comparing it with the input data.