SIGNAL ANALYSIS AND MODELING OF WIND TURBINE CLUTTER IN WEATHER RADARS

Lately, the continuing expansion of wind energy industry has led to the installation of several wind farms which are often in the vicinity of the weather radars. This is a source of growing concern for the weather radar community since wind turbines interfere with the normal operation of the weather radars. The wind turbine tower can drive the receivers into saturation and the Doppler shift from the moving blades can introduce errors in the estimation of wind speed, reflectivity and rainfall rates. The radar cross-section of the wind turbines has a large temporal and spatial variation which poses additional difficulties for traditional clutter filtering algorithms. This paper presents a first-order theoretical model of the radar signature of a wind turbine that can be helpful in deducing its unique features to be incorporated in filtering out the wind turbine clutter. A comparison with the observations from an S-band radar is made later in the paper.