On the Use of a Radial-Based Noise Power Estimation Technique to Improve Estimates of the Correlation Coefficient on Dual-Polarization Weather Radars

AbstractA weather surveillance radar antenna intercepts thermal radiation from various sources, including the ground, the sun, the sky, and precipitation. In the radar receiver, this external radiation produces noise that adds to the receiver internal noise and results in the system noise power varying with the antenna position. If these variations are not captured, they translate into erroneous signal powers because these are computed via subtraction of noise power measurements from the overall power estimates. This may lead to biased meteorological variables at low to moderate signal-to-noise ratios if those are computed using signal power estimates. In dual-polarization radars, this problem is even more pronounced, particularly for correlation coefficient estimates that use noise power measurements from both the horizontal and vertical channels. An alternative is to use estimators that eliminate the need for noise corrections but require sufficient correlation of signals in sample time, which limits th...