Estimation techniques for rainfall rate using differential phase shift in X-band weather radar

There is a recent interest in X-band weather radar due to the high sensitivity and to the cheap microwave hardware. However, the attenuation due to the precipitation itself makes it difficult to estimate the rainrate unless this phenomena is of limited extent, as for insulated phenomena and/or short range operation (e.g. for valleys, urban basin hydrology). The authors analyze the limits in the rainfall rate estimation in the X-band using differential phase shift (mainly due to signal-to-noise ratio) and the effect of the backscattering differential phase shift.