POLARIZATION EFFECTS ON A SINGLE POLARIZED OFF-THE-GRID X-BAND RADAR

The electromagnetic signal propagation with vertical or horizontal polarization from a meteorological radar and the interaction with precipitation particles were studied by [1]. As a result of the studies, the researchers identified how a vertical polarized signal interaction with a precipitation particle differs from that of a horizontal polarized signal. This was also examined by [2]. In their work it was found that the attenuation experienced, horizontal polarization tended to be slightly larger than that undergone by vertical polarization [2], where the main cause of this phenomenon was identified as the raindrops distortion when falling. For heavy rain events, raindrops distortion is more noticeable than in light rain, since the raindrop diameter is extremely small and the shape is spherical, while, for heavy rain the diameter increases and the shape becomes oblate. The objective of this research is to identify the proper polarization to avoid certain effects of rain attenuation in the Off-the-Grid (OTG) single polarized X-band radar network installed in the western region of the tropical island of Puerto Rico. This network was developed under the NSF CASA-ERC1 at UPRM2. To achieve this, it was necessary to have two independent OTG radars with different orthogonal polarizations. Then a comparison between horizontal polarized data and vertical polarized data was performed to calculate the differential reflectivity (Z(DR)). The results will be presented along this paper.