Under the Hood - How Signal Processing in the WSR-88D Provides the Best Quality Data

Since the 1970s, the United States weather radars have undergone major hardware upgrades to incorporate Doppler and dual polarization (i.e., from the WSR-57 to the current WSR-88D). To process this new information, signal processing must also undergo major enhancements. Between hardware upgrades, supplementary signal processing helps to advance the WSR-88D with new scientific techniques. These new techniques aim to improve the quality of the weather radar data. Over the course of its life cycle, the WSR-88D has seen important data quality improvements directed at ground clutter mitigation, range-velocity ambiguity mitigation, and meteorological estimation. Here, we discuss some of these techniques and provide background on the successful integration of the techniques into the WSR-88D.