Correction of Doppler Radar Data for Aircraft Motion Using Surface Measurements and Recursive Least Squares Estimation

Abstract

Measurements of Doppler velocity of hydrometeors from airborne Doppler weather radars normally contain a component due to the aircraft motion. Accurate hydrometeor velocity measurements thus require correction by subtracting this velocity from the observed velocity. A method for estimating the aircraft motion contribution using the measured Doppler velocity for the surface is described. The method is based on a recursive least squares fit of a model for the surface Doppler to data acquired over several scans of the radar antenna. The method does not use the aircraft navigational data. Tests of the method on both simulated and real data are presented.