3D wind field reconstruction for turbulence avoidance with airborne Radar

Atmospheric Turbulence is a frequent cause of injury on board airliners even equipped with Doppler Radar for turbulence warning. Up until now, these warnings were based on the measurement of statistical properties of the radial component of the wind, measured nearly horizontally, ahead the aircraft (the only one which is measurable by Radar). Some hypotheses, such as the isotropy of the turbulence, are made to estimate the other components: indeed, "en-route" aircrafts are mainly disturbed by vertical and lateral turbulences. The proposed method performs a 3D reconstruction, without a priori assumption of the wind field. In the future, this method could provide detection of Clear Air Turbulence by inference; even help mitigate the effects of turbulence by coupling the radar to the flight control computer.