The ARC C250P radar is designed for high quality data acquisition and analysis in both research and operational settings. ARC utilizes the NCAR-developed TITAN/CIDD radar product generation and display software, which has been refined through decades of research and operational use around the planet, for both standard and polarimetric radar products.
The ARC C250P has been implemented for studying precipitation variability and Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE) for water resource management. It is an ideal operational system for monitoring severe and hazardous weather in real-time, as well as for post-event research and analysis of severe and hazardous weather and cloud and precipitation formation.
- Prime focus circular parabolic reflector with hi-isolation OMT
- Dish Diameter: 4.3 meters
- Polarization:
- Simultaneous Horizontal & Vertical (SHV), Horizontal (Hor) or Vertical (Ver) modes
- Alternating Horizontal & Vertical pulses available on special order
- Beamwidth: 0.95 degree 3 dB
- Scanning:
- 30 deg/sec velocity
- 20 deg/sec2 acceleration
- Scan types:
- SUR (360 deg) with elevation step
- PPI sector scan with elevation step
- RHI scan with azimuth step
- Magnetron transmitter
- Peak Power: 250 kW
- Frequency: 5.5 – 5.7 GHz
- PRF: 0 to 2.5 kHz
- Digital IF processing by HiQ digital receiver
- Signal processing algorithms implemented in host PC
- Gate spacing: 30 – 1000 m (150 m typical)
- Variable types:
- Z (Equivalent radar reflectivity factor, dBZ)
- V (Doppler radial velocity, m/s)
- W (Velocity spectrum width, m/s)
- P (Power received, dBm)
- Zdr (Differential reflectivity)
- Phi-dp (Differential phase)
- Kdp (Specific differential phase)
- Rho-hv (Co-polar correlation)
- NCP/SQI (Normalized Coherent Power/Signal Quality Index)
- Zcoh (Coherent equivalent radar reflectivity factor, dBZ)
- Phase (Differential and Absolute phase)
- Screen image capture
- Interfaces directly to NCAR Thunderstorm Identification Tracking Analysis and Nowcasting (TITAN) and Configurable Integrated Data Display (CIDD) systems as used in many countries for polarimetric rainfall estimation, weather modification studies and hydrometeor particle classification. Spectral clutter filtering (CMD) is performed in TITAN processing.