Computer simulation of weather radar signals

Computer simulation is largely used in radar signal analysis. The present work treats the simulation of precipitation echoes in weather radar applications. Such simulated signals are very useful when different processing techniques have to be tested and compared. Modern weather radar has both Doppler and polarimetric capabilities; from the simulation point of view, this implies the generation of two pseudorandom sequences with an assigned autocorrelation function (ACF) and an assigned cross correlation. A new generator of pseudorandom sequences is proposed and compared with an old one. The results show that the novel technique represents correctly both the ACF and the cross correlation, even when a limited number of samples (e.g. 8 or 16 typical of Air Traffic Control applications) is considered. Finally, the computer time needed to generate one sequence is evaluated and compared for both generators.