Impact of the radar frequency on the detection of raindrops

In this contribution results from two raindrop Doppler sensors operating at 24 GHz and 122 GHz will be presented. For signal processing short-time FFT and Hilbert transform are applied and compared. Major advantages of the higher frequency are the higher RCS of raindrops caused by its strong frequency dependency as well as the improved separation of raindrops due to higher velocity separability. Furthermore the transition from Rayleigh to Mie scattering with increasing wavelength is discussed using 3D EM simulations.