WEIGHTED IMAGING DOPPLER INTERFEROMETRY

Development of a simplified, multiple-receiver, wind estimation scheme is presented. The new algorithm is a modification of the three-receiv er, imaging Doppler interferometry (IDI3) technique, which estimates t he location of scattering centers and their corresponding radial veloc ities. Using the estimated location of the scattering centers, a solut ion for the three components of the wind vector is obtained. The modif ication presented is based on a weighted least squares solution of the radial velocity equation. Many IDI3-like analyses are hampered by the use of a threshold that determines whether a scattering center is ''g ood'' or ''bad.'' Using the weighted least squares solution simplifies the IDI3 procedure by eliminating the need for a threshold. It should be noted that the results obtained by IDI3 are extremely sensitive to the thresholding scheme used. In addition to eliminating the need for the thresholding procedure, the new algorithm greatly reduces the mea surement variance in the horizontal wind estimates. Data collected fro m the Middle and Upper (MU) Atmosphere radar are used to substantiate the technique.