Evaluation of a weather clutter simulation

The output of a high-fidelity weather clutter simulation, designed to model a low-PRF X-, C-, or S-band phased array radar, is compared with measurements made by three radar systems. The first comparison demonstrates the simulation´s ability to replicate real horizon search measurements in terms of various signal properties. The second comparison demonstrates the simulation´s ability to generate signals that reflect the vertical dynamic and thermodynamic structure of stratiform precipitation. The third comparison demonstrates the simulation´s ability to create weather clutter signals with exotic power spectrum shapes that do exist in nature. In all three cases the simulation output is found to compare well with the real radar measurements. Thus, this simulation is a very good tool for generating realistic weather clutter signals and as such provides a valuable source of data for applications requiring such signals. In addition, this simulation can be used to add controllable weather clutter to existing experimental measurements that may have been affected by weather if it had been present at the time of measurement. This allows the effects of weather clutter to be considered when analysing any experimental data set