Traceability Model Design and Validation for Precipitation Radar

The propagating process of data chain of a large instrument is usually indicated by the traceability model. In this paper, to enhance the measurement accuracy of the precipitation radar, we proposed a traceability mode design scheme for the power measurement internal the precipitation radar, which is the key parameter relating to the precipitation measurement. Unlike the conventional internal calibration, we design three additional circuits, including temperature compensation, sectional amplification, auto-calibration power source, according to the traceability model. By introducing three internal detection points, the online soft-calibration data package is obtained by using internal power meters and the environmental sensors. According to the measured power information and the temperature information, the calibration data package provides the online calibration and the attenuation control. Practical internal calibration and real-time online measurement experiments are conducted to validate the design scheme. The experimental results reveal the traceability model design and corresponding soft calibration strategy can improve the reliability of the dynamical measurement data and the dynamical performance of the radar measurement. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.