A weather radar calibration technique

A technique is described which simulates weather echo signals and results obtained by calibrating the National Severe Storms Laboratory's 10-cm Doppler radar. A periodic Gaussian narrow-band random process is realized for simulating weather radar echoes, and selected statistical parameters of the random process are used as inputs to generate input power spectra estimates. The estimates are used to obtain a periodic time test signal, which is then used as modulation at the radar intermediate frequency. The demodulated output from the radar system is digitized, the power spectrum is computed, and results are compared to original power spectrum estimates by Walker et al. (1978). Results indicate that the technique can be used to calibrate a weather Doppler radar in a statistical sense.