Whitening in Range to Improve Weather Radar Spectral Moment Estimates. Part II: Experimental Evaluation

Abstract

Demonstration of a method for improved Doppler spectral moment estimation is made on NOAA's research and development Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) in Norman, Oklahoma. Time series data have been recorded using a commercial processor and digital receiver whereby the sampling frequency is several times larger than the reciprocal of the transmitted pulse width. The in-phase and quadrature-phase components of oversampled weather signals are used to estimate the first three spectral moments by suitably combining weighted averages in range with usual processing at fixed range locations. The weights are chosen in such a manner that the resulting signals become uncorrelated. Consequently, the variance of estimates decreases significantly as is verified by this experiment.