Radar network characterization

The use of dense networks of small radars for weather sensing is being investigated by the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere, with a first test-bed of this new paradigm well underway. The potential benefits of closely-deployed, overlapping, short-range weather radars are easy to see intuitively, and can be summarized as a greater ability to mitigate the effects of the Earth curvature and sense close the ground in all of the network domain, an increased spatial and temporal resolution, the capability of performing multiple-radar measurements, and the capability of adaptively tasking the individual radars according to the meteorological scene, while using less complex radar units. Virtually all of these potential benefits are governed by the trade-offs generated by the characteristics of the particular radar units employed and their spatial distribution, creating different data outcomes depending on the individual radar capabilities, the radar network layout, and the resulting number of radars with overlapping coverage.