Remote sensing of precipitation by a satellite-borne microwave remote sensor

The problem of remote sensing of precipitation by a satellite-borne microwave rain scatterometer is discussed. A downward-looking scanning pencil-beam antenna system is used. The combination of the range-gate method and low side lobe level is used to separate echoes from precipitation layers in the main lobe from ground clutter in the side lobes. Various parameters of the satellite-borne microwave rain scatterometer are calculated and characteristics of systems at 10 and 34.45 GHz are considered. The transmitter peak power needed to observe precipitation with sufficient signal-to noise ratio is calculated by means of the radar equation. The signal (i.e. the received power from the resolution volume of the precipitation) and the received power due to the ground clutter are calculated and the signal-to-clutter ratio is obtained by applying the radar equation. An airborne microwave rain scatterometer is proposed for preliminary experiments.