Simulation Study of Precipitation Using Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar.

Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR) deployed on spaceborne platforms has been a successful tool for imaging the earth. The potential for using SAR for meteorological applications is not fully explored. In this work, the mathematical framework corresponding to weather observations from a SAR is briefly introduced. A spaceborne SAR simulation program is developed which accounts for backscattering from weather present in the radar resolution volume. The satellite parameters of the GPM core satellite is considered and simulations are carried out in stripmap and spotlight mode of SAR. It is observed from the results that the spectral width of the precipitation particles have a direct impact on the azimuth resolution. As expected the spotlight mode of SAR performs better than the stripmap mode of SAR and the results are presented. The simulation studies which are presented in this work are carried out for a monostatic SAR and will aid in understanding observations of precipitation using SAR.