The PAR-Scope: An Oscilloscope Display for Weather Radars

Abstract

The PAR-scope, an oscilloscope display for pulsed radars, uses gated, averaged, amplitude information as one coordinate, and azimuth or elevation as the other coordinate; its display is a profile of average reflectivity. It is operated with a scanning antenna, permitting simultaneous operation with the RHI or PPI display. Such combinations provide means for rapid, three-dimensional quantitative mapping of reflectivity in the vicinity of the radar. Theoretical analysis of PAR-scope performance considers the response of the scanning system to spatial variations of average reflectivity and to the rapid fluctuations characteristic of weather echoes. It is shown that reflectivity distributions of major interest can be easily represented to an accuracy within 1 db of that implicit in the radar calibration.