Twice each year NSSL engineers release a software upgrade to improve the capabilities of the National Weather Radar Testbed Phased Array Radar (NWRT PAR).  The Spring 2013 upgrade was released this week and is now operational.

Specific goals for this project are to improve the quality of meteorological data produced by the NWRT PAR, to demonstrate adaptive scanning capabilities for weather observations, and to demonstrate dynamic scheduling of multi-function scanning strategies.

The new software release includes:

– A new algorithm that identifies and tracks clusters of storms

– Automatic time-based scheduling of storm regions

– Scheduling and processing of a scan that quickly detects newly formed storms

– Real-time controller improvements to reduce initial range of collection and to allow frequent switching between pulse repetition times

– Improvements to control and monitor the system and its algorithms

– Improvements to handle ground-clutter and range-and-velocity ambiguity issues

– Software infrastructure improvements to prevent data drops

New and advanced real-time signal processing techniques continue to provide researchers and users with an optimum platform for demonstrating and evaluating the Multi-function Phased Array Radar (MPAR) concept.

More information about the MPARSUP project can be found at:

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/projects/mparsup/