Abstract
In signal processings of weather radar, the input-to-output characteristics of precipitation echoes due to a linear receiver were investigated by taking into consideration the quantization effect and the deviation of the DC level in the A-D conversion.
Though the bit-number of the A-D converter of the receiver gives essentially the quantization error for the signal processor, it is more suitable to configurate the system by adding the bit-number, which corresponds to the number of times integrating the fluctuating amplitudes of precipitation echo signal in a radar signal integrator, because the quantization resolution can be further improved.
The condition for setting the DC level of the A-D converter is decided by the conventional radar signal processing rather than the MTI signal processing. And it is necessary to pay attention to the drift of the voltage from the point of view of the radar instabilities.
The maximum-to-mean ratios of the amplitudes of the echo signals were investigated. It was found that the value, obtained by simulation in which the Rayleigh amplitude distribution was used for precipitation echo signal, was 2.4 and the measured values range from 2.7 to 4. However, no differences were recognized between the two cases as to the circuit responses in the upper region of the receiver's dynamic range.
