Based on the success of the TRMM mission, a new satellite mission called the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission was proposed. Its major objective is to measure precipitation globally and frequently so that the data can be used not only for scientific research but alto for operational applications such as weather forecasts and water resource management. It consists of the core satellite in a non-sun-synchronous orbit and a fleet of sun-synchronous constellation satellites that carry microwave radiometers. The major role of the core satellite is to provide important information of rain characteristics that can be used for accurate estimation of precipitation rate with constellation radiometers.
The core satellite will carry a Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) which uses the Ku-band (13.6 GHz) and the Ka-band (35.5 GHz). The hardware characteristics of the DPR will be presented. In particular, the paper mentions some special hardware design features such as the variable pulse repetition frequency to increase the sampling efficiency and a delay circuit for matching the Ka- and Ku-band beams. The presentation will also mention new information we can extract from DPR data with a dual-frequency algorithm. A possible algorithm to retrieve the vertical profiles of precipitation will be presented.
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