Development and Initial Observation of High-Resolution Volume-Scanning Radar for Meteorological Application

A new high-resolution Doppler radar, called Ku-band broadband radar (BBR), with fast scanning capability for meteorological application has been developed. Due to the new system design, the BBR can accurately measure the radar reflectivity factor with a range resolution of several meters and a time resolution of 55 s per volume scan from the nearest range of 50 m to 15 km for 10-W power using pulse compression. In this paper, the basic concepts, configuration, and signal processing of the BBR are described. In the initial observation, the observation accuracy of reflectivity is evaluated using Joss–Waldvogel disdrometer (JWD). As a result, the reflectivity of the BBR is in fairly good agreement with that of JWD. In addition, in the spiral observation, a fine structure of a thunderstorm obtained by the BBR is presented.