Estimation of polarization parameters in radar meteorology

In this paper Cramer-Rao lower bounds are presented on the estimation accuracy of any unbi-ased estimator of key polarimetric parameters in radar meteorology. The analysis is carried out by using a widely-accepted model for radar meteorology { the multivariate Gaussian model (Rayleigh fading) { along with the assumptions that the time series of horizontally and vertically polarized echoes are acquired simultaneously, and that the autocorrelation function of the process is known. Two signiicant results of this analysis are that the lower bounds are independent of the known autocorrelation function, and that the eeective number of independent samples is always equal to the total number of samples. An explicit construction of maximum-likelihood estimators is also provided.