Measurement simulations from spaceborne weather radar

Monitoring the meteorological phenomena evolution in those areas of the Ear th not covered by groundbased meteorological radar, is now possible with sp aceborne weather radars. The Spaceborne Weather Radar Simulator is a softwa re program developed to simulate the reflected power from ground, sea and m eteorological targets. It also provides an estimate of the mirror image ret urn and of the Doppler shift of the received signal caused by the satellite motion. The analysis is carried out first by computing the received signal due to a single transmitted pulse and then by considering the transmission of a train of pulses at a given repetition frequency. The code has a versa tile structure able to accept inputs concerning different instrument and ta rget specifications. In this paper the results obtained by simulating the o bservation of a stratiform cloud profile from a 13.78GHz radar, at the orbi t height of 400Km and beamwidth equal to 0.57 degrees, are presented. For t he purpose of these calculations we have considered two pulse lenghts: 10 m u s (range resolution 1500m) and 2 mu s (range resolution 300m). The relate d sensitivities here estimated are respectively 8dBZ (single-10 mu s pulse) and 22dBZ (single-2 mu s pulse). (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.