How many parts in a NOAA radar weather display system?
The electrical signals in a
NOAA radar weather
(pronounced like Noah) arrangement generally follow this route:
1) Transmitter - Sends out short pulses of microwave radiation like a locator radio communication device. Why pulses? These shock waves are good enough, consume less power and allow the same set of NOAA radar weather equipment to receive the reflected signal later on.
2) Antenna - The dish shaped part.
If focuses the pulse, arriving from the transmitter via a special conduit called a wave guide, and directs it outward. Then it catches the incoming signal and sends it to the...
3) Receiver - The enviro processor which handles the incoming goods and makes this type of image possible. It has to clean the signal up first and therefore a lot of electronics such as variable optical attenuators and amplifiers are required here.
You also need a good antenna, receiver and amplifier plus lots of muscle; the received signal is around a million million million times weaker than the outgoing power. To work with these huge math conversions, a logarithmic scale represents the values in the form of
decibels.
4) Processor/Display - The screen or paper you can look at. It usually shows a
CAPPI
output.