One of our PhD students, Brais Sánchez Rama, has successfully carried out his VIVA this Monday, December 18. His thesis dissertation entitled “Towards practical radar-based atmospheric refractivity characterization” was defended in front of an international examination board integrated by Prof. Rafael Caldeirinha, Dr. Isabel Expósito and Prof Shinju Park. In this thesis, a non-linear least squares approach that allows estimating the tropospheric refractivity and its vertical gradient from weather radar data, independently of the orography around the radar, has been developed. This technique works with S- and C- band radars. With magnetron and klystron based radars. Additionally, a hardware -less calibration technique, based on ERA-5 data has been proven. Combining the radar refractivity estimates, calculated at different points within the radar coverage area, using kriging interpolation techniques highly accurate refractivity maps with a high temporal resolution are provided.
Congratulations Brais!
Related publications:
- B. Sánchez-Rama, R. Nocelo López, V. Santalla Del Río, and T. Darlington, “Radar-Based Refractivity Maps Using Geospatial Interpolation,” IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, vol. 20, pp 1-5, 2023. DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2023.3328499
- R. Nocelo López, B. Sánchez-Rama, V. Santalla Del Río, S. Barbosa, P. Narciso, R. Pérez-Santalla, A. Pettazzi, P. Pinto, S. Salsón, and T. Viegas, “Refractivity and Refractivity Gradient Estimation From Radar Phase Data: A Least Squares Based Approach,” in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 61, pp. 1-14, 2023. DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2023.3255002
- B. Sánchez-Rama, R. Nocelo López, and V. Santalla del Río, “Radar-Based Refractivity Estimation: A New Calibration Approach Relying on Reanalysis Data,” 2022 16th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), Madrid, Spain, 2022, pp. 1-5.
DOI: 10.23919/EuCAP53622.2022.9769564 - B. Sánchez-Rama, R. Nocelo López, and V. Santalla del Río, “Statistical Characterization of Signals Backscattered from Stationary Ground Targets for Radar Refractivity Estimation,” 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (APS/URSI), Singapore, Singapore, 2021, pp. 1359-1360. DOI: 10.1109/APS/URSI47566.2021.9703950