Incoherent Doppler Processing for Doppler Moment and Noise Estimation for Precipitation

Abstract

The challenge of processing incoherent sets of radar echoes to estimate the Doppler moments and noise standard deviation from precipitation with a fast-scanning radar is addressed. The recently proposed maximum likelihood parametric Doppler spectrum estimator (PSE) is extended to accommodate the noise standard deviation along with the Doppler moments in the parametric model of the Doppler power spectral density (PSD). Its performance in estimating the Doppler moments and the noise standard deviation is compared with another maximum likelihood approach. The proposed approach has a smaller bias in the estimation of the noise standard deviation for a wide range of spectral widths on simulated data. The algorithm is verified on experimental data from a fast-scanning weather radar.