North sea millimeterwave propagation experiment: The Sylt campaign

Abstract

This paper addresses an experiment that was carried out in the North Sea region in the area of the island of Sylt with the aim to study the influence of the maritime boundary layer (MBL) on the propagation of radar signals under low grazing angle geometry. The radar measurements were carried out with the highly versatile MEMPHIS radar operating in sea configuration at X, Ka and W band simultaneously. Concerning the oceanographic and atmospheric characterization, the WTD 71 was responsible for the collection of measurements with a sophisticated suite of sensors partly mounted on the research vessel Elisabeth Mann Borgese. Over a period of four days a valuable dataset was collected including clutter measurements under different geometrical configurations. In this contribution the focus is given to the propagation aspects where dedicated propagation runs were carried out each day. First measurement results will be presented and an insight in the overall approach will be given together with a modelling approach based on the parabolic wave equation with input parameters from the meteorological and oceanographic sensors.