SPACEBORNE RADAR FOR RAIN AND CLOUD MEASUREMENTS A CONCEPTUAL DESIGN

Eastwood Im and Kent Kellogg Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California 91 109

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A conceptual design for a mid-latitude orbiting precipitation and cloud mapping radar is discussed. In this conceptual design the radar utilizes a narrow, dualfrequency beam, electronically scanned antenna to achieve 4-km spatial resolution and 300-km cross-track swath. Vertical resolution of 500 m is achieved by short-pulse transmission. It is expected that such system can measure rain rates up to 100 mm/hr for precipitation at the cloud base, surface precipitation up to 20 mm/hr, and cloud reflectivities as low as -39 dBz. By averaging over1 00 independent samples, signal reflectivities can be estimated to better than 20%. Other rain and cloud characteristics, such as height, thickness, and cell size, can also be extracted from the data.
Key words : radar, precipitation, cloud, reflectivity, GEWEX.

radar is being considered as one of the potential candidates. In this paper, we will present some of the design tradeoffs and a preliminary system concept for a rain/cloud radar instrument which meets the GEWEX science goals. The paper will start out by addressing some major design issues associated with radar sensing of rain and cloud. It will be followed by a description of a modeled system design that satisfies the science requirements, and a discussion on the associated technology issues. For the purpose of GEWEX study, a technology development cutoff date of 1996 was assumed.

DESIGN ISSUES AND TRADEOFFS

For total global coverage as well as adequate space-time sampling two polar orbiting satellites will be required. However, the costs associated with such data acquisition approach can be formidable. On the other hand, if we forgo the measurement of precipitation poleward of 60" (above which the total precipitation is less than about 5% of the global amount) a precessing 60" inclination orbit would provide adequate diurnal sampling over a period of about 6 weeks. The lower inclination also implies a relatively lower orbital altitude, which in turn eases the technical requirements on both the spacecraft and the instrument. For the purpose of evaluating the radar performance an orbital altitude of 400 km was assumed throughout this paper. One key issue regarding the instrument design is the selection of appropriate frequencies. The selection must take into account the precipitation and cloud signal detectabilities, resolution versus antenna size, and hardware implementation feasibility. Unlike the tropical rain radars where the rain-path attenuation is the major concern, the instrument of interest must be sensitive enough to measure light rain and clouds that often encountered at mid and high latitudes. Such consideration leads to the selection of 35 and 94 GHz. 35 GHz would allow vertical profiling of up to the midrange of rainfalls (at rates up to -20 mm/hr), and it also

INTRODUCTION
Cloud and precipitation have major impacts on the global energetic, hydrological, and biochemical cycles. They are also the crucial components in the meteorological and climate structures. However, in order to study these impacts and other related phenomena cloud and precipitation data must be collected regularly on a global basis. Passive sensors (both optical and microwave) have been employed for many years to provide such data sets, and they have contributed significantly in our understanding of the atmospheric system. More recently, the potentials of spaceborne radars for rainfall profiling have been examined. The general consensus is that radadpassive instrument complement can provide a better characterization of the rain systems. In fact, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) will have both passive and active sensors in its instrument package to acquire a 4-year time series of accurate tropical rainfall data in the late 1990s [l]. The Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) [2], an initiative of the World Climate Research Program, is studying the feasibility of implementing an advanced instrument package on a mid-latitude orbiting satellite for rain and cloud measurements in the early 2000s. In that study

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permits the probing of cirrus clouds. However, it is marginal at best for water cloud (stratus) detection, and insufficient for quantitative measure of stratus reflectivity. On the other hand, 94 GHz allows detection, and even quantitative measure, of virtually all types of cloud systems, but its rain profiling capability is limited to -10 mm/hr. In order to reduce the sampling errors, i t is highly desirable to obtain large radar swath coverage. This implies that a rapidly scanning antenna is required. Mechanically scanned antennas, although low in cost, have too slow a scan rate which may lead to the missing of many rain/cloud targets. The advances in phase shifter technology nowadays has made the electronically scanned antennas the unique candidates for this application. From considerations on antenna design complexity. pulse smearing and surface clutter interferences, crosstrack scan pattern, similar to that to be implemented on the TRMM radar [ 3 ] ,is preferable over the conical scan pattern. If an even larger cross-track swath width is desirable, an adaptive cross-track scan pattern [4], similar to that proposed by the Tropical Rain Mapping Radar (TRAMAR), can be adopted. However, the last option must be studied carefully because the strengths of radar echoes obtained during the so-called "quick scan" are considerably weaker in this case. Remote sensing of rain and cloud by spaceborne radars must confront with the problem of surface clutter interference, which can potentially bias the radar reflectivity measurements. To effectively minimize this interference the antenna sidelobes must be suppressed to a very low level. At 35/94 GHz, the required peak

sidelobe ratios are 30/25 dB and t h e required integrated sidelobe ratios are 25/20 dB, respectively. Such sidelobe performance requirements are reaching the state-of-art in the current spaceborne antenna technology. Because of the low radar reflectivities for both cloud and light rain and of high altitude operation, the spaceborne radars must be equipped with high peak power transmitter, typically on the order of a few kilowatts, in order to detect these meteorological targets. This, again, is reaching the limit of the state-of-art technology in the spaceborne power transmitter area.

CONCEPT U A L DES I G N AND FE AS I B ILIT Y ASSESSMENT

A graphical illustration of the rain/cloud radar system concept is given in Figure 1. In this conceptual design, the radar antenna scans + 2 l 0 from nadir to obtain a 300km cross-track swath width. With the effective antenna aperture of 5 m x 5 m, radar ground footprints of sizes less than 1 k m x 1 km at 35 CHz and 400 m x 400 m at 94 GHz are obtained. The overall horizontal resolution of 4 kni x 4 km is obtained by pulse averaging. The vertical resolution of 500 m is achieved by using the 3.3-ps transmitted radar pulses. Frequency diversity is utilized to obtain 100 independent samples per resolution cell. The radar parameters for this particular design are listed i n Table 1. Figure 2 represents the overall system functional block diagram. The instrument consists of an electronically scanned, dual-array-fed cylindrical parabolic reflector antenna, a R F subsystem, and a digital data subsystem. At 94 GHz, the required peak power is obtained through

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94 GHz 35 GHz w w Polarization Antenna 5.0 x 5.0 5.0 x 5.0 Effective aperture (m) Beamwidth, 3-dB one-way (deg) 3.118 x 0.118 0.044 x 0.044 61.3 59.1 Peak gain at nadir (dB) -25 -30 Peak sidelobe (dB) -20 -2s Integrated sidelobe (dB) t 21 _+2 1 Scan angle from nadir (deg) 2 4 Transmit peak power (kW) 3.3 3.3 Pulse duration (microsec) 2.9 1s 2.915 PRF (kHz) 5 5 Frequency dithers 1 1 Spacing between dithers (MHz) 360 360 Bandwidth (kHz) -3.0 -2.0 Transmit path loss (dB) -3.5 -2.5 Receive path loss (dB) -0.6 -0.6 Digitization noise (dB) 1772 1224 System noise temp (deg) 63 77 System dynamic range (dB) Table 1 System parameters for the rain and cloud radar.

Figure 1 Conceptual design of the rain and cloud radar.

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the use of a klystron tube. At 35 GHz, active T/R modules are embedded into the feed array elements, thus eliminating the need for an additional high power source in the RF subsystem. Signals are transmitted to and distributed along the antenna feed array using highly efficient quasi-optic techniques such as beam waveguide. In the radar transmitter area, solid state and MMIC technologies are rapidly maturing at 35 GHz with output powers already exceeding 0.5 W for a single device; it is envisioned that 2.5-W devices, as required for the T/R element of the above radar design, will be readily available in the 1996 timeframe. It is noted, however, that solid state devices at 94 GHz will not likely be available when required, and klystron or travelingwave-tube devices must be employed. Ground-based 94GHz klystrons are presently operating at or above the required power level: however, significant development work in both the power supply and packaging designs for spaceborne application is required. The antenna subsystem consists of a cylindrical reflector and a feed that consists of two arrays of radiating elements at 35 and 94 GHz. This antenna design utilizes several developing technologies, particularly at 94 GHz, to enable efficient performance. For instance, the utilization of beam waveguide to provide extremely low path loss as well as high RF power handling capability; and quasi-optic techniques at 94 GHz to accomplish the power distribution along the feed array. An active electronic distortion compensation technique, similar to that being proposed for TRAMAR [4], is also used to ensure the electrical smoothness of the antenna surface.

reflectivities with an accuracy of better than 20%.

CONCLUSIONS
A conceptual design for a mid-latitude precipitation and cloud mapping radar was discussed. This system can provide a 3-dimensional precipitation and cloud data set that covers f60" latitude band of the globe. The horizontal and vertical resolutions of the acquired data are 4 km and 500 m, respectively. It is expected that such system can detect both light and intense precipitation (0.1 to 100 mm/hr) at the top of the rain cell, light to moderate surface precipitation (0.1 to 20 mm/hr), and virtually all cloud systems. By averaging over -100 independent samples, the signal reflectivities can be estimated to better than 20%. Other rain and cloud characteristics, such as height, thickness, and cell size, can also be extracted from the data. Most of the hardware technologies required to implement such instrument have been demonstrated in ground applications. However, significant efforts are needed in order to extend such technologies for space applications. This is particularly true in (1) 2.5-W solid state devices at 35 GHz; (2) space-qualifiable power supplies (up to 40 kV) and packaging techniques for electron beam amplifier devices; (3) quasi-optic feed and array distribution network; and (4) antenna phase distortion algorithm.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research described in this paper was performed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administraction.

ANTICIPATED RADAR PERFORMANCE

The electromagnetic characteristics of rain and clouds used to evaluate the radar SNR performance are shown in Table 2. The corresponding single-pulse rain SNRs were computed by assuming a rain cell height of 4 km, and the results are shown in Figure 3. As we can see from these results, the single-pulse SNRs of 10 dB or better can be achieved for precipitation near the top of the rain cells. However, the signals are attenuated rapidly as they propagate through the rain path due to rain absorption and scattering. For this particular design, the single-pulse SNRs of 0 dB or better can be achieved for signals backscattered by surface precipitation. The single-pulse cloud SNRs are: Cirrus : Stratus:

REFERENCES

J. Simpson, R.F. Adler and G.R. North, "A proposed Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Satellite," Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., Vol. 69, pp. 278-295, 1988.
G. McBean, ed., "Concept of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment," in World Climate Res. Prog. Report WMOITD-No. 203, 1988.

J. Awaka, T. Kozu and K. Okamoto, "A feasibility

study of rain radar for the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission - determination of basic system parameters," J. of the Comm. Res. Lab., Vol. 35, pp. 111-133, July 1988. E. Im and F. Li, "Tropical rain mapping radar on the space station.," in Proceedings of IGARSS'89, 1989, pp. 1485-1490.

0 dB (35 GHz), 11 dB (94 GHz); -5 dB (35 GHz), 3 dB (94 GHz).

The minimum detectable radar reflectivities after a 100sample averaging are -28 dBZ at 35 GHz and -39 dBZ at 94 GHz, respectively. Therefore, the 94-GHz channel can detect virtually all cloud systems. Furthermore, if Rayleigh distribution is assumed for the radar echo fading, this particular design can measure rain and cloud

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SYSTEM DATA

I
4GH7.

FY

,
QUASI-OPTIC FEED

LOCAL

osc
I

STEP SYNTHESIZER CONTROL

Figure 2

System block diagram for the rain and cloud radar.

RAIN HEIGHT : 4 km

RAINRATE (mmhr)

Figure 3 Anticipated signal-to-noise performance of the rain and cloud radar

rain
h (l/m)

rain
k (dB/km)

cloud G q (dbZ)

cloud k (db/km) 0.001 (cirrus) 0.189 (stratus)

0.001 (cirrus) 1.012 (Stratus)

35 GHz
94 GHz

1.44x10-5 ~ 1 . 2 9 1.01~104 ~0.89 (R < 2 mm/hr) 1.31~10-4 Ro.59 (R > 2 " / h r )

0.21 ~ 1 . 0 6 5 -1.89 (cirrus)

-16.3 (stratus)

1.35~0.753 -1.89 (cirrus) -16.3 (StI'dtUS)

Table 2 The assumed electromagnetic characteristics of rain and clouds.

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