A Study of Comb Beam Transmission on Phased Array Weather Radars

The comb beam transmission (TX) approach, which forms a power antenna radiation pattern with multiple mainlobes, was studied for application to phased array weather radars. Combining the use of comb TX and a digital beamforming receiver enables a weather radar to observe multiple directions simultaneously. Numerical simulations show that the two-way antenna radiation patterns formed by comb TXs have properties comparable to conventional weather radar observation: almost the same mainlobe widths are achieved, and with reference to the mainlobe peak, the maximum sidelobe level is less than -37 dB, and the sidelobe level reaches -60 dB at an angle of 13.77 degrees. These properties are superior to the wide TXs that are normally utilized by phased array weather radars. A simulation that applied the comb TX approach to a current C-band weather radar showed that the volume scan time can be reduced from almost 500 s to 1 min.

Automated summary

The study demonstrated that the comb beam transmission approach, combined with digital beamforming receiver, can improve the performance of phased array weather radars, reduce volume scan time, and enable simultaneous observations in multiple directions.