Investigation and Application of FCA Method for Langfang MF Radar Wind Retrievals

Medium Frequency (MF) radar is one of the significant ground-based instruments for the horizontal wind measurements over the height range of 60～100km in the near-space. The Full Correlation Analysis (FCA) is the mainly used method to get wind velocity for MF radars with the Space Antenna Mode (SAM), which was introduced in details in this paper. Based on the antenna configuration of Langfang MF radar, the FCA algorithms with 3 antenna and 4 antenna called FCA-3A and FCA-4A respectively, were developed. The rejection criteria for FCA algorithm were also discussed and given. The algorithms were applied in the processing of the raw data of Langfang MF radar to compute wind velocity. The wind results were compared with those calculated by the ATRAD FCA software which was used in many MF radar sites in the world and it was shown that they are consistent with each other. The wind velocities estimated with the FCA-3A method agreed very well with those with the FCA-4A method. Results show that the algorithms of FCA-3A and FCA-4A are reliable for Langfang MF radar data processing.