Salient features of the dual‐frequency, dual‐polarized, Doppler radar for remote sensing of precipitation

The global precipitation measurement (GPM) mission is an international satellite mission to obtain accurate observations of precipitation on a global scale every 3 h. Its (GPM) core satellite was launched on 27 February 2014 with two science instruments: the microwave imager and the dual‐frequency precipitation radar. Ground validation is an integral part of the GPM mission where instruments are deployed to complement and correlate with spacecraft instruments. The dual‐frequency, dual‐polarization, Doppler radar (D3R) is a critical ground validation instrument that was developed for the GPM program. This paper describes the salient features of the D3R in the context of the GPM ground validation mission. The engineering and architectural overview of the radar is described, and observations from successful GPM ground validation field experiments are presented.