Wind speed estimation for low-altitude windshear based on Space-Time APES

When detecting low-altitude windshear with airborne weather radar, the real signals are usually covered with strong clutter. In this paper, according to the airborne phased array weather radar, a novel method of low-altitude windshear speed estimation based on Space-Time Amplitude and Phase Estimation (APES) is proposed to solve the above problem. The method constructs the space-time adaptive processor with APES theory to obtain clutter suppression and match the windshear signal, then estimates the signal doppler frequency which resulting in the wind speed estimation. The experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve a superior clutter suppression performance and an accurate wind speed estimation in high clutter-to-noise ratio and low signal-to-noise ratio.

I. Introduction

Windshear is a dangerous weather phenomena due to the sudden change of wind speed and direction [1]. Low-altitude windshear occurs in 600m below, is usual the diffusion process resulting from the strong airflow impact the ground. Low-altitude windshear has the characteristics of sudden, short duration, small scale, high strength and difficult to detect. When the aircraft taking off or landing into strong low-altitude windshear zone, the sudden transform between reverse and forward lead to lift decrease and height reduction, which may result in a flight accident. Therefore, the research of detection technology of low-altitude windshear is an important topic in the field of aviation transportation. Basis of detection of low-altitude windshear should be estimation of wind speed.