HYDRIX a new operational low cost X band dual polarization radar for meteorological and hydrological applications worldwide

This paper presents the hardware of a new polarimetric pulse Doppler X band meteorological radar designed to be used with a high efficient software ZP HI (presented in a companion paper) in order to yield high precision meteor ological and hydrological data The development of the instrument results fr om a tight cooperation between European research institutes and private fir ms each partner having a specific know how. In this unattended instrument dual polarization and dual receiving channels are used simultaneously. The antenna with ultra low sidelobes in both pola rizations is an in-house conception offset-fed paraboloid dish. The 50 kW p eak power magnetron transmitter is designed in order to have a long lifetim e. Both receiving channels signals are digitized under 14 bits at the IF le vel and processed by an ENIGMA II digital Doppler Signal Processor, an ultr a high speed performance weather radar signal processor. The FROG radar dat a computer software yields the first level meteorological data and the ZPHI rain profiling algorithm leads directly to the important meteorological an d hydrological informations. Maintenance aspects are carefully taken into account already at design stag e. The radar is completely portable and can be quickly installed at almost any site. An important design feature has been to achieve a low cost solution which i s affordable for services like city hydrology and water management, sewage facilities, airports final approach zone, and as a fill-in for blind area o f weather service networks. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reser ved.