Calibration and data preprocessing for the flight experiment of Chinese spaceborne precipitation measurement radar

In China, two precipitation measurement radars (PMR) have been developed and deployed on aircrafts to carry out field experiments since July 2010. As one important part, calibration experiments using the active radar calibrator (ARC) are conducted for the airborne PMRs. Then those radar parameters deduced from external calibration are used to preprocess radar measurements to obtain the effective radar reflectivity factor. The results of calibration and data preprocessing are also analyzed in this paper.