Design and Verification of the Second-Generation Precipitation Radar Processor/Controller

Abstract—NASA/JPL has developed the on-board pro- cessing electronics for the Second-Generation Precipitation Radar (PR-2)—a follow-on to the 14 and 36 GHz precipi- tation radar aboard the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission—to support advanced capabilities such as adaptive scanning and compression of rainfall science data. We describe the design and experimental performance of the spaceborne PR-2 processor/controller module, which is based upon field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technol- ogy. Test results demonstrate a high timing efficiency of about 90% for the adaptive scan and very low range side- lobes of ‐75 dB for the radar’s receive processor.