A Hybrid Beam-Forming and Direction-Finding Method for Wind Direction Sensing Based on HF Radar

Recent studies indicate that the poor antenna sidelobe level of phased-array high-frequency (HF) radars degrades the performance of Bragg ratio estimation for wind direction measurements. To explore this issue, this paper improves the previous model of wind direction estimation for phased-array HF radars, and the effect of unsatisfactory array patterns on Bragg ratio estimation is theoretically analyzed. Moreover, a hybrid beam-forming and direction-finding method, in which wind direction is measured by reducing the influence of unsatisfactory array patterns on Bragg ratio estimation, is proposed for multifrequency HF radars installed along the coast of Zhejiang Province in China. The procedure for implementing this scheme is also presented in detail. Wind directions derived from 8.05-, 10.7-, 16.8-, and 19.2-MHz radar data are compared with measurements collected with anemometers at three sampling locations to verify the proposed method, and the measurements with root-mean-square errors from 19.5° to 26.6° show that this strategy is effective for wind direction measurements. We recommend adopting the proposed method or using similar approaches to estimate wind direction based on HF radars, especially in situations where the array pattern is not sufficiently narrow.