Airborne Doppler radar detection of low altitude windshear

As part of an integrated vindshear program, the Federal Aviation Administration, jointly with NASA, is sponsoring a research effort to develop airborne sensor technology for the detection of low altitude vindshear during aircraft take-off and landing. One sensor being considered is microvave Doppler radar operating at X-band or above. Using a Microburst/ Clutter/Radar simulation program, a preliminary feasibility study was conducted to assess the performance of Doppler radars for this application. Preliminary results from this study are presented. Analysis show, that using bin-to-bin ACC, clutter filtering, limited detection range, and suitable antenna tilt management, vindshear from a "vet" microburst can be accurately detected 10 to 65 seconds ( . 7 5 to 5 Km) in front of the aircraft. Although a performance improvement can be obtained at higher frequency, the baseline X-band system simulated detected the presence of a vindshear hazard for the "dry" microburst. Although this study indicates the feasibility of using an airborne Doppler radar to detect low altitude microburst windshear. further detailed studies --including future flight experiments will be required to completely characterize the capabilities and limitations.