A Physically Based Radar Simulator

Abstract

There is a growing use of multiparameter radars for observation of the atmosphere and, in particular, for remote sensing of rain. Radar systems have the undeniable advantage of being able to monitor very large areas with a single installation in real time. On the other hand, their measurements are often only qualitative; the conversion of the radar measurables into meteorological quantities (like rain rate) is not unique, depending on the model assumed for the target. In this context, the availability of sophisticated radar simulators can prove to be extremely useful to try and discriminate the effect of the different contributions on the received echoes. In this paper a physically based software radar simulator is presented; the synthetic radar signal is generated by adding up (in amplitude and phase) all the contributions coming from each single scatterer present into a virtual meteorological environment. The characteristics of the radar system are properly taken into account, as well as the effects of propagation and wave polarization.