A Procedure to Correct Airborne Doppler Radar Data for Navigation Errors Using the Echo Returned from the Earth's Surface

Abstract The development of airborne Doppler radars for atmospheric sciences research has vastly improved the ability to measure atmospheric storms. This paper addresses a new technique for improving airborne Doppler radar data quality. Assuming the earth's surface is flat and still, the technique uses the airborne radar measurements of the earth's surface reflectivity and velocity to correct for errors in navigation and radar pointing angles. The methodology makes use of the helical scanning adopted in the existing systems onboard the two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration P3 aircraft and on the National Center for Atmospheric Research Electra aircraft (ELDORA/ASTRAIA radar). On the basis of a scan-by-scan analysis, it is shown that this methodology has the potential to retrieve most of the navigation errors, including errors in aircraft altitude, aircraft speed and drift, aircraft vertical velocity, aircraft pitch and roll, radar ranging error, and error in antenna spin angle. The methodolo...