Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1 summarizes main characteristics of our low-cost weather radars for both configurations
described in Sec. 2.1 and 2.2: the innovative “wind-mill” (tailored to narrow valleys in
mountainous terrain) and the more conventional horizontal scanner (also called “super-
gauge”). More details on the temporal sampling scheme and averaging process are given in the
next Section 2.3.
Frequency X-Band (9.4 GHz)
Range up to 30 km
Power 10 kW
Pulse duration for long (short) pulse 400 (80) ns
Pulse Repetition Frequency 800 (3200) Hz; for long (short) pulse, respectively
1] Super-Gauge Single elevation, 3.6° beam width, horizontal plane
2] Wind-mill 1.2° along valley, 25° across valley, vertical plane
Antenna (depending on scanning) 1] 0.6 m paraboloid; 2] slotted waveguide
Cost of a mini radar < 30 kEuro (within a network of, say, 6 radars)
Table 1. Main characteristics of the low-cost weather radar.
2.3 High temporal resolution
The use of precipitation estimates from weather radar has been limited not only by the
quantitative accuracy but also by the spatio-temporal resolution: firstly, there is a significant
number of sources of uncertainty in the process of converting the reflectivity volume data
measured by a radar to an estimate of falling precipitation close to the ground. The factors that
contribute to this uncertainty have been introduced and summarized in Section 1. Secondly, the
spatio-temporal resolution of radar-based QPE products from weather radar networks was
generally insufficient, especially for small-scale hydrological applications. Hence, one important
advantage of our mini-radar with small antenna approach is also the high temporal resolution.
Fig. 1. The portable, low-cost weather radar with (left picture) and without (right picture)
the 1-meter Diameter radome. The configuration shown here is the so-called “super-gauge”,
which is a single-elevation scanning in the horizontal plane with a 3.6° beam width
parabolic reflector (Diameter of the paraboloid is 0.6 m).
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