Effect of beam broadening on the VHF Doppler mini-radar simple method for correcting wind velocity errors

A Doppler VHF mini-radar has been developed at LSEET (Laboratoire de Sondag es de l'Environnement Terrestre) to permit investigations at low altitudes, where classical large ST-VHF profilers are blind in the first kilometers o f the atmosphere, and UHF boundary layer radars are disturbed by precipitat ions, birds and insects echoes. Due to a small size of the antenna array, b eam broadening effects are important and can provide errors in the atmosphe ric parameter estimation (reflectivity and wind velocity). A simple overlap ping correction method based on the decomposition of the power spectrum is employed to retrieve wind velocity profiles. Measurements from a high-resol ution ST radar are used as a benchmark which allows data comparisons and ev aluation of this new method. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights rese rved.