A High Altitude Airborne Wind Mapping Radar

Through the NASA Instrument Incubator Program (IIP), NASA, the University of Massachusetts and remote sensing solutions have teamed to design and develop a dual wavelength, dual beam conically scanning Doppler radar for deployment on the NASA Global Hawk platform and other high altitude aircraft. This system is to map the tropospheric, atmospheric, and surface wind fields in and around tropical cyclones by using cloud particles and precipitation as tracers. The design has been completed and the instrument is now being fabricated. To realize this system, innovations in antenna design, transmitter design and measurement processing were required. This paper shall present these innovations and outline the expected performance of this novel system.