Errors in the determination of wind speed by Doppler radar.

Abstract

A numerical model to simulate radar data is used for testing various estimators of the Doppler shift in Doppler radar echoes. Five estimators for the Doppler shift are considered: the pulse pair and poly pulse pair algorithms in the correlation domain, least squares fitting to the power spectra in linear and logarithmic coordinates, and a matched filter in the spectral domain. An experiment with real data, to test the algorithms further and to assess the importance of small scale wind fluctuations on radar performance, shows that geophysical limitations on the accuracy of the wind estimates are the dominant factor for observations with good signal-to-noise ratio.