New Weather Radio System Uses Multiple Radars

Japan’s Furuno Electric Co., Ltd announced its new X-band Doppler Weather Radar systems can provide amazing 3-D images of meteorological phenomena by combining multiple Doppler radar systems.

Such a multi-radar system can be constructed by networking more than three of the company’s WR-2100 “Dual Polarimetric X-band” Doppler units, or one WR-2100 and two Furuno WR-50 “Compact X-band” Doppler weather radar devices, with each doing real-time monitoring of horizontal movement of nimbus clouds.

A company statement provided this explanation:

“Conventional weather radar, which is generally enormous and deployed at the top of mountains, is not suited for locating nimbus emerged at an altitude from 500 to 2,000 m. It is such nimbus that the Furuno weather radar system is intended for locating. Its radar antennas are designed to be deployed at the rooftop deck of buildings in urban areas in mesh configuration with a distance of 30 km between each antenna. As a result, the radar system can detect nimbus in the distance, even though it may be blocked by other nimbus at a closer range. At the moment, Furuno is looking to utilize this new radar technology to enhance the precision level of rainfall prediction and to detect the development of short localized rainstorms, which are hard to predict.”

I wonder which TV station will be the first to employ the multi-radar, multi-site Doppler radar system.

Doug Lung
Contributor

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack. A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.