Raytheon LPR Polarimetric Weather Data Processing System

An outgrowth of a 15 year collaboration between Raytheon and the Univ. of Mass. Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), the Raytheon Low Power Radar (LPR) is a 1-meter aperture, X-band, multifunctional, planar, phased-array radar. Key to LPR is its ability to switch between single- and dual-polarimetric operation to facilitate multi-mission capabilities, including, aircraft detection (V-polarization), copter-type micro-drone detection (H-polarization), and weather classification (dual-linear H/V polarization). Previous joint Raytheon/CASA AMS presentations (2015; 2018) gave first-looks at the weather capabilities of a Raytheon-built first generation LPR prototype (LPR LPR I) and the multifunctional capabilities of the First-RF/Raytheon low-rate initial production second generation LPR (LPR LPR II). This paper briefly reviews the hardware evolution of LPR from LPR I to LPR II and does a deep dive into the polarimetric weather capabilities of LPR II using example data from the various LPR II assets and the Weather Data Processing (WDP) software system that has been developed for it.