Quality Control Algorithms for the Kennedy Space Center 50-MHz Doppler Radar Wind Profiler Winds Database

Abstract

This paper presents the process used by the Marshall Space Flight Center Natural Environments Branch (EV44) to quality control (OC) data from the Kennedy Space Center's 50-MHz Doppler radar wind profiler (DRWP) for use in vehicle wind loads and steering commands. The database has been built to mitigate limitations of using the currently archived databases from weather balloons. The DRWP database contains wind measurements from approximately 2.7-to 18.6-km altitude at roughly 5-min intervals for the August 1997-December 2009 period of record, and the extensive OC process was designed to remove spurious data from various forms of atmospheric and nonatmospheric artifacts. The OC process is largely based on DRWP literature, but two new algorithms have been developed to remove data contaminated by convection and excessive first-guess propagations from the median ñlter/first-guess algorithm. In addition to describing the automated and manual OC process in detail, this paper describes the extent of the data retained. Roughly 58% of all possible wind observations exist in the database, with approximately 100 times as many complete profile sets existing relative to the EV44 balloon databases. This increased sample of near-continuous wind profile measurements may help increase launch availability by reducing the uncertainty of wind changes during launch countdown.

Effect of the Convective Boundary Layer on Radiosonde Flight Path Over Baghdad Airport Station (Case Study)

“…The system receives raw pressure, temperature and humidity data and Global Positioning System (GPS) transmitted from flight radiosondes. Local GPS antenna connected to system can acquire differential GPS data for highly accurate radiosonde tracking and wind speed and direction calculations (20,6). All data are sorted in the system computer processed and put in different displaced screen, see (Figure 2), show some of screen displaced in Win9000 software.…”

Temporal Wind Pairs for Space Launch Vehicle Capability Assessment and Risk Mitigation

“…Various algorithms and methodologies were applied in the QC process of the 50 MHz DRWP (D-50) data and in the 915 MHz DRWP (D-915) automated QC process [7,14]. Additional QC on the D-915 data included removing profiles with duplicate timestamps, filling temporal data gaps greater than 15 min, and checking for correct altitude progression.…”

“…Historically, empirical statistical techniques of quantifying temporal UL wind change lacked sufficient sample sizes that required fitting the empirical UL wind change distributions to theoretical extreme value probability distribution functions (PDFs) to obtain estimates of UL wind change at extreme percentile levels [3]. Over the past decade, upgraded UL wind measurement systems have been operating at launch ranges and activities have been conducted to archive UL wind data in order for use in vehicle trajectory assessments [6,7]. Incorporating these archived UL wind profiles will reduce the uncertainty and increase confidence in the quantification of empirical extreme UL wind change percentile levels for use in trajectory assessments and also reduce the uncertainty in launch availability assessments.…”

A Quality Control Method and Implementation Process of Wind Profiler Radar Data

“…The second type focuses on quality control algorithms for wind data obtained after performing parameter estimation for the spectrum. For example, Barbré [24] introduced a signal-processing system, which uses a median filter to remove spurious Doppler spectral data and constrains the search for the atmospheric signal by a first guess and get good results. Kumar, S. [25] proposed that the averaging of winds is found to be more effective in removing outliers and reducing the RMSE.…”