Publications
A hybrid Cartesian windfield synthesis technique using a triple Doppler radar network
June 24, 1991
Conference Paper
Published in:
25th Int. Conf. on Radar Meteorology, 24-28 June 1991, pp. 630-633.
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Summary
The estimation of air and particle motions in storms from multiple Doppler radar measurement is a long standing problem in radar meteorology. Our research interest in understanding the relationship of electrical change generation processes above the freezing level to thunderstorm life cycle, and in the detailed quantification of the eventual low altitude divergent outflow produced by the storm, demands an accurate retrieval of air and particle motions at essentially all altitudes within the storm. We found that existing approaches had deficiencies for our needs, and have developed an improved "hybrid" approach which attempts to provide high quality estimates throughout the storm volume.
Summary
The estimation of air and particle motions in storms from multiple Doppler radar measurement is a long standing problem in radar meteorology. Our research interest in understanding the relationship of electrical change generation processes above the freezing level to thunderstorm life cycle, and in the detailed quantification of the eventual...
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An improved gust front detection algorithm for the TDWR
June 24, 1991
Conference Paper
Published in:
25th Int. Conf. on Radar Meteorology, Paris, France, 24-28 June 1991, pp. J37-J42.
Summary
Gust fronts are associated with potentially hazardous wind shears and cause sustained wind shifts after passage. Terminal Air Traffic Control (ATC) is concerned about the safety hazard associated with shear regions and prediction of the wind shift for runway reconfiguration. The Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) system has a gust front detection algorithm which has provided an operationally useful capability for both safety and planning. However, this algorithm's performance is sensitive to the orientation of the gust front with respect to the radar radial. Due to this sensitivity, the algorithm is unable to detect about 50% of gust fronts that cross the airport. This paper describes a new algorithm which provides improved performance by using additional radar signatures of gust fronts. The performance of the current TDWR gust front algorithm for the various operational demonstrations has been documented in Klingle-Wilson et al. (1989) and Evans (1990). These analyses highlighted deficiencies in the current algorithm, which is designed to detect radial convergent shears only. When gust fronts or portions of gust fronts become aligned nearly parallel to a radial, the radial component of the shear is not as readily evident. In addition, gust fronts that are near or over the radar exhibit little radial convergence along their lengths and ground clutter can obscure the gust front near the radar. Thus, special handling is needed for fronts that approach the radar. Figure 1 illustrates the various components of a gust front as viewed by Doppler radar. The portion of the gust front in the figure labelled radial convergence is detectable with the current algorithm. Fronts, or portions of fronts, that are aligned along the radar radial and those that pass over the radar are examples of events which can exhibit little or no radial shear signature. These events are often detectable by variations in the radial velocities from azimuth to azimuth (i.e., azimuthal shear)., and/or by radar reflectivity thins lines. The new algorithm improves the detection and prediction of gust fronts by merging radial convergence features with azimuthal shear features, thin line features, and the predicted locations of gust fronts which are passing over the radar. The next four sections of this paper describe the individual components of the improved algorithm. Section 6 describes the rule base used to combine detections from the four components into single gust front detections and Section 7 discusses the output of the algorithm.
Summary
Gust fronts are associated with potentially hazardous wind shears and cause sustained wind shifts after passage. Terminal Air Traffic Control (ATC) is concerned about the safety hazard associated with shear regions and prediction of the wind shift for runway reconfiguration. The Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) system has a gust...
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Status of the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar - one year before deployment
June 24, 1991
Conference Paper
Published in:
25th Int. Conf. on Radar Meteorology, Paris, France, 24-28 June 1991, pp. J1-J6.
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Summary
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initiated the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) program in the mid-1980s in response to the need for improved real time hazardous weather (especially low altitude wind shear) detection in the terminal area. The program is designed to develop a reliable automated Doppler radar based system to detect terminal weather hazards and provide warnings that will help pilots successfully avoid these hazards. Following the successful operational evaluation of the TDWR concept which was described at the last conference, a production contract was awarded to the Raytheon Company, with the first deliveries scheduled for fall of 1992. This paper will describe the current status and deployment strategy for the operational systems and present recent results from the extensive testing of the radar system concept and weather information dissemination approach.
Summary
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initiated the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) program in the mid-1980s in response to the need for improved real time hazardous weather (especially low altitude wind shear) detection in the terminal area. The program is designed to develop a reliable automated Doppler radar based system...
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Weather information requirements for terminal air traffic control automation
June 24, 1991
Conference Paper
Published in:
Fourth Int. Conf. on Aviation Weather Systems, 24-28 June 1991, pp. 208-214.
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Summary
Aviation operations in the airport terminal area, where flights converge from a number of directions onto one or two active runways, create a fundamental limitation on the capacity of the national airspace system. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recognized that the throughput of existing terminals can be increased significantly by providing the terminal air traffic control team with Terminal Air Traffic Control Automation (TATCA) tools that increase the efficiency of individual controller tasks and provide a dynamic, overall plan for traffic management throughout the terminal control region (Andrews and Welch, 1989). This latter function relies on accurate projection of traffic flow into the future (0-30 minutes) in order to automatically examine the many possible permutations of control actions. The result is a coordinated plan for the multiple (four to ten) control positions involved in the decision making processes that determine end-capacity at the runways. The FAA has launched an intensive effort to develop and implement TATCA capabilities by taking advantage of preparatory work done at NASA Ames Research Center, MITRE Corporation, and M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory. An initial TATCA configuration, the Final Approach Spacing Tool (FAST), will be evaluated in the field beginning in 1993 and will be scheduled for possible national implementation two years later. Estimates of the economic value of TATCA-generated operational improvements, when implemented at major airports nationwide, are expected to be over $1 billion yearly by the year 2000 in reduced fuel consumption, other air carrier operating costs, and passenger time (Boswell et al., 1990). Since TATCA is first and foremost a planning system, the primary impacts of weather upon T ATCA performance involve disruption of planning. This can occur because of sudden or unexpected changes in routing, runway availability, or separation standards. In addition, errors in estimated wind produce errors in time-to-fly predictions made by the TATCA planning logic. The TATCA system must be robust with respect to weather events that commonly occur in its region of operation. This paper describes an initial study of the weather information requirements for TATCA, and their relationship to current and future systems for measurement, integration, forecasting and dissemination of meteorological data in the terminal area. A major goal is to stress the need for close coupling between ongoing initiatives in weather sensing/forecasting in the airport terminal area, and air-space capacity enhancement programs.
Summary
Aviation operations in the airport terminal area, where flights converge from a number of directions onto one or two active runways, create a fundamental limitation on the capacity of the national airspace system. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recognized that the throughput of existing terminals can be increased...
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High resolution microburst outflow vertical profile data from Huntsville, Alabama, and Denver, Colorado
April 10, 1991
Project Report
Published in:
MIT Lincoln Laboratory Report ATC-163
Summary
The purpose of this report is to present detailed data on microburst outflows recorded by the TDWR testbed radar (FL-2) in Huntsville, Alabama (1986) and Denver, Colorado (1987-88). Whenever possible, a microburst detected within 10 km of the radar was scanned in a vertical direction (RHI) at 1 to 2 degree azimuthal intervals about the center of divergence. The vertical profile of the outflow is pertinent to the detection capability and siting strategy of a single Doppler radar observing the microburst from a horizontal viewing angle. Additionally, outflow features are important in assessing the hazard associated with microbursts as well as the capability of other wind shear detection (LLWAS or ASR). Of particular interest is the variability of outflows depths from case to case and site to site. If the depth across the maximum velocity differential is shallow, an outflow might go undetected or underestimated by a radar, the beam ot which was not viewing the axis of peak divergence. Previous research projects in Denver reported the highest winds in a microburst typically occur near the surface with an average outflow depth (1/2 peak velocity) ranging between 500 and 600 meters: however, the vertical resolution of these data was fairly crude due to the scan strategies utilized. This report provides detailed high resolution microburst outflow vertical profile data pertinent to TDWR system studies based on RHI and closely spaced PPI scans. The median observed outflow depth in Huntsville was 200 meters shallower than in Denver while the median height of the maximum velocity varied from 100 meters AGL in Huntsville to 200 meters AGL in Denver. For those Denver events presented here, we recommend that the TDWR microburst detection scan extend to at least 200 meters AGL and 100 meters if there is adequate clutter suppression.
Summary
The purpose of this report is to present detailed data on microburst outflows recorded by the TDWR testbed radar (FL-2) in Huntsville, Alabama (1986) and Denver, Colorado (1987-88). Whenever possible, a microburst detected within 10 km of the radar was scanned in a vertical direction (RHI) at 1 to 2...
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Terminal Doppler Weather Radar operational test and evaluation Orlando 1990
April 9, 1991
Project Report
Published in:
MIT Lincoln Laboratory Report ATC-179
Summary
Lincoln Laboratory conducted an evaluation for hte Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) system in Orlando, Florida during the cummer of 1990. In previous years, evaluations have been conducted at airports in Kansas City, MO (1989) and Denver, CO (1988). Since the testing at the Kansas City International Airport, the radar was modified to operate in C-band, which is the intended frequency band for the production TDWR systems. The objectives of the 1990 evaluation period were to evaluate TDWR system performance in detecting low-altitude wind shear, specifically microbursts and gust fronts, at the Orlando International Airport and in the surrounding area; to refine the system's wind shear detection capabilities; and to evaluate elements of the system developed by the contractor, which were new for this C-band system and therefore not available for evaluation in previous years. Some performance comparisons are made among results from the vastly different weather environments of Denver, Kansas City, and Orlando. The report discusses and presents statistics for the performance of the system in detecting and predicting microbursts and gust fronts. A significant use of the prediction capability is its potential use for air traffic control (ATC) personnel to plan aitport operations when hazardous weather is predicted. Issues such as low-velocity ground clutter (from tree leaves, road traffic, and dense urban areas) that affect prediction performance are discussed, along with possible software modifications to account for them. FInally, the ATC personnel and pilots who took part in the evaluation provide the users' perspectives on the usefulness of the system's capabilities.
Summary
Lincoln Laboratory conducted an evaluation for hte Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) system in Orlando, Florida during the cummer of 1990. In previous years, evaluations have been conducted at airports in Kansas City, MO (1989) and Denver, CO (1988). Since the testing at the Kansas City...
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Clutter suppression for Doppler weather radars with multirate sampling schemes
December 11, 1990
Project Report
Published in:
MIT Lincoln Laboratory Report ATC-149
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Summary
Reliable weather parameter estimates are required of radars such as the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) - a Federal Aviation Administration project - which will automatically detect hazaradous weather phenomena in the vicinity of an airport. Velocity and range aliasing will degrade the quality of these estimates, as will contamination by ground clutter. For radars which operate at short ranges and at low elevation angles, as the TDWR will to detect windshears at the airport surface, clutter contamination is an especiallly severe problem. Multirate pulse trains - pulse trains containing multiple intersample spacings - can extend both the unambiguous velocity and range of a Pulsed Doppler Radar beyond those afforded by pulse trains with a constant intersample spacing; but the usual properties of conventional clutter filter architectures change radically when applied to data collected with a multirate sampling scheme. A brief introduction to the systems and weather considerations fo Doppler Weather Radars is provided and the Pulse-Pair spectral moment estimators are presented. This introduction is followed by a discussion of frequency domain clutter rejection tecniques for Batch PRT (Pulse Repetition Time) sequences - blocks of equispaced samples with the PRT alternating from block to block. The main topic of the report is clutter suppression for Staggered PRT sequences in which the PRT alternates from pulse to pulse. The Staggered PRT scheme has the advantage over the Batch PRT scheme of spatial coherency for estimates of the radar return signal's autocorrelation function at the lags corresponding to the two PRT's. A time-varying filter architecture with multiple transfer functions is presented and analyzed, and its interaction with the Pulse-Pair estimators is explored. Three design techniques for Staggered PRT filters are described and assessed in the context of clutter suppression. The final section of the report summarizes the results for the Batch and Staggered PRT schemes and provides suggestions for further research.
Summary
Reliable weather parameter estimates are required of radars such as the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) - a Federal Aviation Administration project - which will automatically detect hazaradous weather phenomena in the vicinity of an airport. Velocity and range aliasing will degrade the quality of these estimates, as will contamination...
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Characteristics of thunderstorm-generated low altitude wind shear: a survey based on nationwide Terminal Doppler Weather Radar testbed measurements
December 1, 1990
Conference Paper
Published in:
Proc. 29th IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, 5-7 December 1990, Vol. 2, pp. 682-688.
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Summary
The characteristics of microbursts and gust fronts, two forms of aviation-hazardous low altitude wind shear, are presented. Data were collected with a prototype terminal Doppler weather radar and a network of surface weather stations in Memphis, Huntsville, Denver, Kansas City, and Orlando. Regional differences and features that could be exploited in detection systems such as the associated reflectivity, surface wind shear, and temperature change are emphasized.
Summary
The characteristics of microbursts and gust fronts, two forms of aviation-hazardous low altitude wind shear, are presented. Data were collected with a prototype terminal Doppler weather radar and a network of surface weather stations in Memphis, Huntsville, Denver, Kansas City, and Orlando. Regional differences and features that could be exploited...
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A study of dry microburst detection with airport surveillance radars
November 29, 1990
Project Report
Published in:
MIT Lincoln Laboratory Report ATC-176
Summary
This report evaluates the capability of Airport Surveillance Radars (ASRs) for the detection of low altitude wind shear associated with the outflows of dry microbursts. It describes results of simulations of dry microburst observations by an ASR. These simulations incorporated weather and clutter data collected by the FL-2 pencil-beam Doppler weather radar at Denver Stapleton Airport in 1988 and 1989 and clutter data collected by the FL-3 ASR-9 emulation radar at Hunstville, Alabama. The impact of signal strength, overhanging precipitation, and ground clutter on both observability and algorithmic performance are assessed. Principal results of study are the following: 1. Overhanging precipitation and weak signal strength do not, by themselves, prohibit detection of dry outflows; however, occurence of false alarms and biases in velocity estimates indicate that improvements in the dual beam estimator that was evaluated would be required for reliable detection of these events. 2. Ground clutter tends to obscure dry outflow in regions where the difference between median effective clutter reflectivity and weather reflectivity exceeds 17-20 dB. A method for predicting the percentage of missed microburst detections due to ground clutter is used to estimate overall microburst detection probabilities for a "dry" environment such as Denver. Using measured clutter from an experimental ASR in Hunstville, AL, overall microburst detection probability is 83 percent. Using simulated Denver clutter, overall detection probability is 91 percent.
Summary
This report evaluates the capability of Airport Surveillance Radars (ASRs) for the detection of low altitude wind shear associated with the outflows of dry microbursts. It describes results of simulations of dry microburst observations by an ASR. These simulations incorporated weather and clutter data collected by the FL-2 pencil-beam Doppler...
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Automated flight strip management system functional description
November 19, 1990
Project Report
Published in:
MIT Lincoln Laboratory Report ATC-174
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This document gives a high level functional overview of an automated flight strip management system. The current manual flight strip system at Boston's Logan Airport is reviewed and described in detail for both the Tower Cab and TRACON with emphasis on the information flow as an aircraft progresses through the system. The interfaces between the ATC elements, as they related to flight data, are explained. Finally, the system requirements are described including specific requirements for Tower Cab positions.
Summary
This document gives a high level functional overview of an automated flight strip management system. The current manual flight strip system at Boston's Logan Airport is reviewed and described in detail for both the Tower Cab and TRACON with emphasis on the information flow as an aircraft progresses through the...
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