Communications: directive radio wave systems and devices (e.g. – Radar for meteorological use
Patent
1998-07-27
1999-10-26
Pihulic, Daniel T.
Communications: directive radio wave systems and devices (e.g.,
Radar for meteorological use
G01S 1395
Patent
active
059736356
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention pertains to the field of devices that use radar to detect atmospheric conditions, and more particularly to the radar devices that use radio emissions to identify localized wind shear events that are known as microbursts.
PROBLEM
A microburst is a type of meteorological event that is characterized by localized low-altitude horizontal and/or vertical wind shears of about 0.0025/(m/s)/m or greater. For example, a microburst type of wind shear can have a wind speed difference of ten meters per second over a distance no greater than four kilometers.
Aircraft are particularly vulnerable to the affect of a microburst. Upon encountering a microburst, an aircraft can fall several hundred feet in altitude or a pilot can encounter severe difficulty in steering the aircraft. Thus, microburst dangers are particularly acute in regions around airports where airplanes travel close to the ground at lower speeds and often with full flaps and/or landing gear down. For these reasons microbursts are suspected as having contributed to numerous airplane crashes every year. However, the actual number of crashes that are caused by microbursts each year remains unknown because of the transitory and undetected nature of the microburst.
One significant problem exists in locating a microburst because they are often invisible to the naked eye due to the lack of dust and/or rain being carried by the microburst. Other wind shear events including, but not limited to, tornadoes and storm gust fronts are more easily avoided because they can be seen with the naked eye due to dust and/or rain being carried by the event. For this reason, reliable microburst detection requires the use of instrumentation that can expand the range of human perception.
Conventional microburst detection relies upon techniques that are similar to Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR). TDWR techniques identify interesting regions having high wind speed loss indicators, and then shape building techniques are used to clump the interesting regions into shapes and remove spurious points. However, TDWR only measures wind speed loss over the full extent of a windshear region which is different from a windshear measurement that is the rate of change of wind speed at a specific point or path. Thus, the TDWR lacks a direct connection to the F-factors that are well known aircraft safety indicators requiring wind shear data in their computation. Another problem is that TDWR lacks sensitivity to such conditions as low reflectivity that tend to hide microburst activity. Further, TDWR processing is a complex algorithm that requires a large number of adjustable parameters. For this reason, apparatus that incorporates the TDWR process is difficult to tune for accuracy in different localities. The failure to properly tune TDWR can result in false microburst indications that cause needless aircraft rerouting, or the failure to detect actual microburst activity thereby exposing aircraft to a potentially lethal risk.
The preferred state of the art microburst detection system utilizes mathematical modeling, fuzzy logic, and pattern recognition techniques to identify microburst activity more precisely than the existing systems outlined above. The accuracy of the preferred microburst detection system is realized by considering all available atmospheric and/or meteorological information before reaching a decision as to whether a point or points should be rejected as uninteresting relative to the likelihood of microburst activity. Basing microburst activity decisions on the consideration of all available atmospheric and/or meteorological information facilitates suppressing false microburst indicators that lead to false microburst detections by the existing systems outlined above and facilitates detecting microburst activity where a microburst would otherwise go undetected by the existing systems outlined above.
The preferred microburst detection system is defined using terms that are defined for clarity below. The term "image" means any graphi
REFERENCES:
patent: 5130712 (1992-07-01), Rubin et al.
patent: 5247303 (1993-09-01), Cornelius et al.
patent: 5311183 (1994-05-01), Mathews
patent: 5648782 (1997-07-01), Albo
Pihulic Daniel T.
University Corporation For Atmospheric Research
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