An On-Board Processor for a Spaceborne Doppler Precipitation Radar: Requirements and Preliminary Design

Use of Doppler velocity measurement in spaceborne precipitation radar is highly desirable, since it can allow more accurate retrieval of atmospheric latent heating, which depends on both cloud and rain microphysical processes and on dynamical processes, namely, vertical updrafts and downdrafts. However, if the rain within the antenna beam is very non-uniform, biases can result with conventional pulse-pair processing, and more sophisticated processing is required. The solution is a timefrequency approach, which uses the full Doppler spectrum at each point in time. Since precipitation radars normally operate continuously and collect large amounts of data, realtime, on-board processing of data is needed to reduce the data rate. The objective of this work is to develop an onboard data processor for spaceborne Doppler precipitation radar, using field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. This paper describes the simulations and analysis that have been completed during the project’s first year. This includes both analytical calculations and bit-true simulations that allow the effects of finite word length to be explored. Tradeoffs have also been considered between speed and space within the chosen FPGA part. The results of these analyses have been used to develop a complete set of requirements for the processor. Initial design work has begun, based on these requirements. The design is being implemented in Verilog, and a description of this early design effort is also be given.