Design and Performance Characteristics of the New 8.5-m Dual-Offset Gregorian Antenna for the CSU–CHILL Radar

Abstract

Abstract The Colorado State University–University of Chicago–Illinois State Water Survey (CSU–CHILL) national weather radar facility has been operated by the Colorado State University under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation from 1990 to the present. The radar is configured to measure the elements of the 3 × 3 polarimetric covariance matrix based on using a two-transmitter and two-receiver system in the horizontal–vertical polarization basis. This S-band Doppler, dual-polarized radar facility is used for observations of precipitation with the highest possible data quality. To achieve this, a new dual-offset 8.5-m Gregorian antenna was custom designed and built by VertexRSI (now General Dynamics SATCOM) in Kilgore, Texas, to replace the circa 1994 center-fed parabolic reflector antenna. Here, the design features used to achieve the stringent specifications in terms of the sidelobe envelope and off-axis cross-polar levels are described, and the way in which they were validated at the manufacturer’s long- and short-range pattern measurement facility. Measurements in several different storm types, including stratiform rain and an intense hailstorm, and ground clutter (from mountains) are used to illustrate the new antenna performance. The linear depolarization ratio (LDR) system limit is shown to be −40 dB or better, which should lead to more insights into the microphysics of convective precipitation at subfreezing temperatures (e.g., hail formation, improved hydrometeor-type classification), and in winter precipitation in general (e.g., aggregation processes, rimed versus unrimed particles). In the case of the intense hailstorm, it is shown that measurement artifacts resulting from strong cross-beam gradients of reflectivity, up to 40 dB km−1 at 40-km range, have been greatly reduced or eliminated. Previously noted measurement artifacts with the 1994 antenna at storm tops in intense convection have been eliminated with the dual-offset antenna. The ground (mountain) clutter example shows greatly reduced returns (in terms of near-zero mean Doppler velocity areas) because of rapid falloff in the sidelobe levels with increasing elevation angle. The greatly improved antenna performance as compared with the 1994 antenna are expected to result in corresponding data quality improvements leading to more accurate measurement of rain rate and hydrometeor classification.