Kaz Adamowski

Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada, K1N6N5

Accurate small scale space-time measurements of precipitation are needed to make future progress in understanding, modeling and predicting precipitation. A new radar system was designed and a prototype manufactured based on wideband TEM-Horn antenna. The radar has plus-minus one-half degree beam width capable of transmitting/receiving pulses of duration 1ns and rise time of 2 ps, operating in the frequency range of 1 to 300GHz covering the whole relevant frequency spectrum.

The manufactured radar was calibrated and tested using a rainfall simulator assembled in the Hydraulics laboratory at the University of Ottawa. Radar observations gave excellent agreement with simulated rainfall rates.

Furthermore, the radar was used outdoors to measure naturally occurring rainfall. The results compared well with tipping-bucket raingauge observations. The calibration results also indicate that it is possible to measure a single raindrop at a distance of 2.5km with 99% probability.