An investigation of geostationary Doppler weather radar performance based on mean Doppler radial velocity and spectrum width measurements

Geostationary Doppler weather radar (GDWR), which is a novel and challenging instrument concept, can provide reflectivity profiles and Doppler dynamic information of meteorological targets over a circular disk coverage of approximately 5300km in diameter on the earth. In this paper, we estimate the mean Doppler radial velocity and Doppler spectrum width of GDWR, which have not been studied in the literature. We first calculate the relevant GDWR system parameters, and then investigate the accuracy of the mean Doppler radial velocity and Doppler spectrum width measurements using discrete Fourier transform and pulse pair methods. Simulation results show that the estimation performance is limited by the large normalized spectrum width of the echo when there is wind shear in the radar resolution volume. Proposals of improving the accuracy of the mean Doppler radial velocity and Doppler spectrum width estimates are also suggested.