Integration of the Motion-Compensated Steering and Distributed Beams’ Techniques for Polarimetric Rotating Phased Array Radar

The rotating phased array radar (RPAR) has the potential to improve the capabilities of the current U.S. Weather Surveillance Radar–1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) operational network and can be more affordable than other candidate phased array radar (PAR) architectures that have been evaluated to replace the WSR-88D. Considering the demanding functional requirements for the future U.S. weather surveillance radar, it is expected that several advanced RPAR scanning techniques will need to be applied simultaneously to achieve them. In this letter, we present the integration of two such RPAR scanning techniques: motion-compensated steering (MCS) and distributed beams (DBs). MCS exploits beam agility to mitigate beam smearing, while DB exploits digital beamforming to reduce the scan time or the standard deviation (SD) of estimates. The integration of these techniques is demonstrated with the National Severe Storms Laboratory’s (NSSL) dual-polarization advanced technology demonstrator (ATD) radar system. Results show that these techniques can be used simultaneously to enhance azimuthal resolution and reduce the SD of estimates without impacting data quality if certain obtainable tradeoff considerations are incorporated in the radar design process.