Adaptation of hybrid spectrum width estimator to staggered PRT for WSR-88D

Spectrum width, a measurement of the variability of the radial wind velocities within a radar pulse volume, has been shown to be useful in the remote detection of in-cloud turbulence for aviation users. The standard pulse-pair estimator of spectrum width, which uses the zeroth and first lags of the autocorrelation function of the I&Q time-series, has been shown to have biases and large errors for low signal-to-noise ratios and/or small true spectrum widths. Previously, we presented a replacement for the WSR-88D spectrum width estimator, scheduled for deployment in build 13, which integrates simpler estimators to produce a superior spectrum width estimate. This straightforward approach takes advantage of the relative strengths of each of the simpler estimators. In this paper we discuss the adaptation of the algorithm to staggered PRT pulsing schemes as well as possible improvements to the algorithm. Results from simulations and case studies are shown.