A strong and successful history of internal development has led the UK Met Office to consider the possibility of an in-house solution a so called Open System Architecture (OSA) approach to the network renewal. The OSA solution proposes to continue the current network philosophy of buying in appropriate state of the art radar sub-systems. Hardware components are selected from a wide range of manufacturers and suppliers, ensuring the best elements available are utilised. This solution secures sustained operation and the opportunity for capability enhancement as future requirements demand.
The new radar's transmission polarization is switchable between single plane linear and 45 degree dual polarization. The new processing system (Cyclops-DP) is an evolution of the Cyclops-D series of receiver/processors and as such includes patented IP, designed to make measurements of refractivity with magnetron based radars easier and more accurate. Furthermore, Cyclops-DP is to incorporate an antenna mounted receiver and digitizer architecture. To address maintenance and thermal control issues, a design decision was made to minimise the processing carried out at the top of the tower. To that end, digitization and digital down conversion occurs in antenna mounted components. These data are then streamed via a fibre optic link to a PC in the radar equipment room where the more complex signal processing is carried out.
In this paper we report the UK Met Office's experiences and an initial evaluation of the performance of the new system.
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