Development of an active radar calibrator for the TRMM precipitation radar

An active radar calibrator (ARC) was developed for the calibration of the first spaceborne Precipitation Radar (PR) onboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. The ARC has three functions of the radar receiver, beacon-signal transmitter, and delayed-transponder. A ground-based measurement using a prototype ARC and a bread-board model of the TRMM-PR demonstrated the ARC's capability for the on-orbit TRMM-PR calibration.