Architecture for and Weather Products Resulting from the Netted Operation of the Raytheon LPR

In contrast to large size, high-power, long-range, weather systems such as WSR-88B, the UMass. Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) pioneered and continues to demonstrate the spatial-temporal and low-altitude coverage advantages of networks of collaborating, small, short-range, low-power, X-band, polarimetric weather radars. While CASA’s demonstrations have involved mechanically scanned dish nodes, the CASA vision had always been a netting of multifunction polarimetric phased-array nodes. Towards this vision, August 2018 completes the installation of a 3 node network of second generation Raytheon X-band, polarimetric, phased-array, low-power radars (LPR LPR IIs) in eastern Massachusetts. This paper overviews this joint Raytheon/CASA project, describing, in particular, the netting architecture and some of the key weather products that differentiate netted systems from single-node systems.