Conceptually New Approach to Wind Measurements by Spaced Receiver Radars

Spaced receiver (SR) radars have shown clear advantages over conventional Doppler beam swinging radars for the measurements of wind profiles at high temporal and spatial resolution. Several effective techniques for wind and turbulence measurements have been developed (Holloway et al. 1997, Cohn et al. 1997). These techniques provide a solution to the diffraction problem by either directly assuming models of the diffraction pattern, or by assuming models of the refractive index field and relating those to the diffraction pattern. All the techniques consider the cross correlations and cross spectra of echoes in spaced receivers, which are the large-scale characteristics of the echoes. It is, however, well known that the large-scale characteristics of the refractive index field depend on atmospheric conditions, so no one model can be universal. This non-universality complicates application of the correlation-function-based techniques for operational, real-time wind and turbulence measurements.