Simulation of digital beam forming method on 2-D phased array weather radar

A 2-D phased array weather radar (PAR) is under consideration. This radar system consists of 6992 antenna elements aligned to form a symmetrical round shape. Adaptive digital beam forming is used to sharpen the fan beam of scattered signals in order to observe precipitation at different elevation and azimuth angles simultaneously. In this paper, two digital beam forming methods including Fourier beam forming (FR) method and minimum mean square error (MMSE) beam forming method are used to simulate the performance of the 2-D PAR and compared with each other. Both point targets and distributed targets are simulated. It is found that the MMSE beam forming method can significantly reduce the sidelobes and is an effective beam forming method for 2-D PAR.