A sun-tracking method to improve the pointing accuracy of weather radar

[摘要] Accurate positioning of data collected by a weather radar is of primaryimportance for their appropriate georeferencing, which in turn makes itpossible to combine those with additional sources of information (topography,land cover maps, meteorological simulations from numerical weather models tolist a few). This issue is especially acute for mobile radar systems, forwhich accurate and stable leveling might be difficult to ensure. The sun is asource of microwave radiation, which can be detected by weather radars andused for accurate positioning of radar data. This paper presents atechnique based on the similarity between theodolites and radar systems aswell as on the sun echoes to quantify and hence correct the instrumentalerrors which can affect the pointing accuracy of radar antenna. The proposedmethod is applied to data collected in the Swiss Alps using a mobile X-bandradar system. The obtained instrumental bias values are evaluated bycomparing the locations of the ground echoes predicted using these biasestimates with the observed ground echo locations. The very good agreementbetween the two confirms theaccuracy of the proposed method.

[学科分类] 几何与拓扑