The National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT) will serve as a tool for radar meteorological research and for investigation of techniques for utilizing phased array radars for weather sensing. Using a SPY-1A phased array antenna, loaned to NOAA by the U. S. Navy, the testbed will be capable of performing scans over user-defined sectors considerably faster than conventional weather radars using rotating reflector antennas.

The radar control structure for NWRT was designed to provide the research community with a great deal of flexibility, allowing the user to design the scan pattern, select the coverage region, select from among a large set of ground clutter filters and automatically optimize the radar dwell for reflectivity or velocity estimation. In addition, the user can program rapid sector scans in any desired sequence or scans executed with the antenna moving.

In this paper, we provide an overview of the radar control architecture used to support NWRT scan flexibility and describe a software tool created to aid the user in designing operational scenarios.