WR-10X RHI Product Generator - USP · WR-10X RHI Product Generator User Manual Document code: ELDES...

WR-10X RHI Product

Generator

User Manual

Document code:

OM-11338-06

WR-10X RHI Product Generator

User Manual

ELDES

Document code:

of 17 Proprietary Information OM-11338-06

The copyright in this document is the property of Eldes.

The document is supplied by Eldes on the express understanding that it is to be treated as

confidential and that it may not be copied, used or disclosed to others in whole or in part for any

purpose except as authorized in writing by Eldes.

Eldes s.r.l.

Via Di Porto 2/b 50018 Scandicci (FI)

ITALY

WR-10X RHI Product Generator User Manual

Document code: ELDES

OM-11338-06 Proprietary Information of 17

Summary

1. GENERAL INFORMATION ................................................................................................................ 7

2. PRODUCT CONFIGURATION AND GENERATION MODE ........................................................................ 8

2.1 PRODUCT CONFIGURATION MODE........................................................................................... 8

2.2 PRODUCT GENERATION MODE .............................................................................................. 13

3. PRODUCT REGISTRATION FILE ...................................................................................................... 16

4. COLORTABLE FILE ....................................................................................................................... 17


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List of Figures

FIG. 2-1 CONFIGURATION GRAPHIC INTERFACE ....................................................................................... 8

FIG. 2-2 COMPARISON BETWEEN THE SURFACE-TYPE (LEFT) AND THE CONTOUR-TYPE (RIGHT) INTERPOLATIONS ......................................................................................................................... 10

FIG. 2-3 COMPARISON BETWEEN THE SURFACE-TYPE (LEFT) AND THE CONTOUR-TYPE INTERPOLATIONS WITH THE MEDIAN FILTER APPLICATION .......................................................................................... 10

FIG. 2-4 DISPLAY OF THE GRID ALONG X (LEFT), THE GRID ALONG Y (CENTRE), THE GRID ALONG BOTH AXES (RIGHT) ....................................................................................................................................... 11

FIG. 2-5 LOG FILE ................................................................................................................................ 12

FIG. 2-6 COMPARISON BETWEEN REAL REPRESENTATION OF THE SCANNED SECTOR (LEFT) AND STRESSED REPRESENTATION OF THE SAME SECTOR (RIGHT) .......................................................................... 12

FIG. 2-7 AVAILABLE INFORMATION IN THE RHI PRODUCT, UTC TIME FORMAT (ABOVE), CEST TIME FORMAT (BELOW)...................................................................................................................................... 14

FIG. 2-8 RHI PRODUCT IN TEXT FORMAT .............................................................................................. 14

FIG. 2-9 STRETCHING EFFECT OF THE PRODUCT IMAGE ACCORDING TO THE SCANNED ANGLE SECTOR ..... 15

FIG. 3-1 PRODUCT REGISTRATION FILE ................................................................................................. 16

FIG. 4-1 COLORTABLE FILE .................................................................................................................. 17




Revisions record sheet


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Document code: OM-11338-06

Date Main changes Rev.

September 2008 First version (release 1.1) 01

May 2008 Second version (release 1.2) 02

July 2010 Third version (release 1.2.1) 03

September 2010 Fourth version (release 1.2.2) 04

May 2012 Fifth version (release 3.0.0) 05

February 2013 Updated Fig. 2.5 and 2.7 New 14 bit format

06


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List of Acronyms

Acronym Meaning

CEST Central Europe Summer Time

GUI Graphical User Interface

MCR Matlab Compiler Runtime

RGB Red-Green-Blue

RHI Range Height Indicator

UTC Universal Time Coordinated




1. General Information This manual describes the generation tool operation properly developed by Eldes for the RHI Product Generation. The RHI Product Generator can be integrated in the environment developed by Eldes related to the WR-10X radar system management through a proper product registration. The RHI Product Generator has been developed by Eldes in Matlab environment and later compiled as shared library in order to assure a full integration with the .NET environment. This kind of technology requires the MCR aid, a software engine distributed royalty free by Mathwork and included in the installation package of Eldes management and control software. The RHI Product Generator supports two operating modes: 'product configuration' and 'product generation'. The RHI Product Generator package includes:

• the RHI_Constructor.dll product library,

• an authentication and registration file of the product, dati_registrazione.txt, necessary to the registration of the product generator in Eldes management environment,

• a colortable file, Colortbl_RHI.txt, necessary to the RHI graphic product generation. The RHI Product Generator operates on a specific scan collection univocally found through the acquisition date expressed in the format 'yyyymmddhhmm' (year, month, hour, minute). The generic scan collection will be hereinafter referred to as 'Scan'.


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2. Product configuration and

generation mode In the following chapters the procedure for the configuration of the product is described. The product format and product characteristics are also described.

2.1 Product configuration mode

When the RHI Product Generator is called in product configuration mode, Eldes radar management application makes available to the user a special graphic interface. The default GUI request is shown below.

Fig. 2-1 Configuration graphic interface




The graphic interface includes three separate sections called, respectively, ‘Product Parameters’, ‘Default Option’ and ‘Saving Option’ with a clear meaning of identifiers. All controls made available by the interface are described in details below. The RHI Product Generator has the function to generate 'n' RHI products related to 'n' on the elevation axis collected during the 'Scan' execution dated on (yyyymmddhhmm) passed to the RHI_Costructor function as input parameter. The RHI products returned by the RHI_Costructor function execution in product generation mode, can have either a graphic format or a text format. The six check boxes, called Generate GIF, Generate PNG, Generate TIFF, Generate JPEG, Generate BMP, Generate Text Files have the function to enable and disable the product generation in the related format. Multiple selections are allowed and it is possible (even if not recommended) to disable the generation of all the available product formats. The Pop-up menu called Image size allows to select one among the five possible sizes for the graphic products. The possible sizes, expressed in pixels, are 480x480, 520x520, 640x640, 820x820 and 1024x1024. The Pop-up menu called Visual interpolation allows to select one between the two possible graphic interpolation algorithms to be used during the graphic products generation. The possible choices are Contour or Surface. The Surface-type interpolation, accurately represents the RHI polar image without any kind of smoothing application in the transition area between a radar cell and the adjacent cells. The Contour-type interpolation, makes the RHI polar product areas, which are characterized by very close colors in the scale, homogeneous. This kind of graphic interpolation is particularly suitable for the representation of thunderstorm formations typically characterized by a greater uniformity in the space distribution of radar echoes in comparison with the case in which the RHI product represents ground-clutter echoes. The stressing of the contours is however performed according to the original characteristics of the image through a level scale having a number of levels equal to the number of the colortable colors used for the product generation.


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Two representations of the same phenomenon generated, respectively, by the Surface-type and the Contour-type interpolation are shown in Fig. 2-2.

Fig. 2-2 Comparison between the Surface-type (left) and the Contour-type (right) interpolations

The check box called 'Enable median filter' has the function to enable or disable the median filter application during the graphic product generation. The median filter is a technique known in image processing field, mainly used for the 'speckle' noise reduction that is the reduction of isolated points in a noisy image. A representation of the same thunderstorm phenomenon represented in the previous figure but with the application of the median filter is shown below:

Fig. 2-3 Comparison between the Surface-type (left) and the Contour-type interpolations with the median filter application




The check boxes called Enable X grid and Enable Y grid have the function to enable the display of the same number of position grids superimposed on the image along X axis and Y axis respectively. The grid along the X axis measures the distance from the radar site expressed in KM, the grid along the Y axis measures the height as regards to the radar site expressed in km. The following figure shows the same RHI product with the application of the grid along the X axis, the grid along the Y axis and both grids.

Fig. 2-4 Display of the grid along X (left), the grid along Y (centre), the grid along both axes (right)

The radio buttons ‘Quote above sea level’ and ‘Quote above radar site’ allow you to define whether the dimensions shown on the y axis must be related to sea level or to radar altitude. The check box called ‘Quote selection’ has the function to enable and disable the specific controls for define the subset rappresentation limits of the really scanned elevation sector. log file update related to the RHI Product Generator. If this option is enabled without an existing log file, a new log file will be created. The check box called 'Save product generation log on file' has the function to enable and disable the specific log file update related to the RHI Product Generator. If this option is enabled without an existing log file, a new log file will be created. The RHI Product Generator log files are generated each month and show, in a text format, all the available information regarding the RHI products generation. The log file name fulfils the following procedure:

RHI-Generator[yyyymm].log.txt


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The log files are saved in the ;\ WR-10X\Bin\LogFiles. proper folder. The typical content of a log file is described in Fig. 2-5.

Fig. 2-5 Log file

The check box called Quote selection allows to enable the checks necessary to the selection of the lower and higher heights displayed in the graphic image produced by product generator. Heights are expressed in Km and are referred to the radar site height. The following figure shows the same RHI product with complete vertical sector scanned by the antenna and the same sector stressed from 0Km height to 16.5Km height through the Quote selection checks.

Fig. 2-6 Comparison between real representation of the scanned sector (left) and stressed representation of the same sector (right)




The 'Default option' section includes two Push Buttons called respectively 'Save default' and 'Load default'. Save default saves the configuration set on the GUI in a proper .XML file, whose name is obtained adding the _default suffix to the name of the configuration file passed to the function as input parameter. Load default loads in the GUI the controls configuration extracted by the above mentioned default configuration file. If a default configuration file is not available, 'Load default' loads a "factory" default configuration. The purpose of this check is to allow the user to recover at any time a preferred configuration previously saved. The 'Saving option' section includes two Push Buttons called respectively Save and Exit, Save, and Exit. Save and Exit saves the configuration set in the GUI in a proper .XML file whose name is passed to the function as input parameter. Once settings are successfully saved, the GUI will close. Save performs the same action of 'Save and Exit' except for the fact that once the configuration is successfully saved, the GUI continues to be open. Exit closes the GUI without saving the settings. Once the desired settings are saved in the proper configuration file, this is read each time the GUI is opened and the settings included in the file are loaded in the GUI. If no configuration file is included in the search path passed to the function as input parameter, the GUI will be opened with a "factory" default configuration.

2.2 Product generation mode

The RHI Product Generator called by a higher level application generates the RHI products related to a specific 'Scan' applying the settings saved by the GUI in the proper .XML configuration file. A list of the necessary information for the products generation is the following: date necessary to univocally find the specific 'Scan', radar acronym (alphanumeric string) necessary to the univocal file name construction of the generated RHI products, search path for the binary files to be processed for the RHI products generation, colortable file necessary to associate the color scale to the reflectivity values, configuration file for the extraction of the settings to be used during the products generation and a parameter called TimeRef which can take the value 0 or 1 in order to apply, respectively, the display of the date in UTC format (Greenwich time) or CEST format (local time). The RHI Product Generator saves all products in the;\ WR-10X\Bin\DataFiles\RHI proper folder. All the generated files, apart from the specific extension, follow the same procedure concerning the name construction:

RHI-rnn- yyyymmddhhmm -B-rrrr-eeee-x

In particular, the product file name includes the following information: product acronym, alphanumeric acronym of the specific radar, the specific 'Scan' date, the range expressed in hundreds of meters, the specific scan elevation expressed in tenths of degrees and an


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indicator taking the value U in case of non de-cluttered product and the value C in case of de-cluttered product. A detail of the available information superimposed on the images produced in case of both UTC and CEST time information is given in the following figure.

Fig. 2-7 Available information in the RHI product, UTC time format (above), CEST

time format (below)

If the RHI product generation is required in text format, a unique file is generated if only the .z binary file related to non de-cluttered data is available. If the .z binary files related to non de-cluttered and de-cluttered data are available, two RHI products are generated in text format, one for each binary file. The RHI product in text format is made of a data polar matrix including a number of lines equal to the azimuth cells, and a number of columns equal to the range cells. The matrix is preceded by three header columns each of which includes a number of elements equal to the number of the azimuth cells. The first column shows a sequential number, the second column shows the beam azimuth position expressed in encoder steps (1 step = 0.17578125 deg), the third column shows the beam elevation position expressed in tenths of degrees. The subsequent columns show the reflectivity data, remapped to 16384 levels, of each cell. An example of the RHI product in text format is given in Fig. 2-8.

Fig. 2-8 RHI Product in text format

The RHI graphic product is differently represented according to the scanned angle sector (information related to the angle sector is shown among the information superimposed on the image). For sectors within 0° and 90° the image related to the scanned sector is stretched, in order to better fill the available space, and the reflectivity scale is shown on the right side of the image.




For sectors within 90° and 180° the image of the scanned sector is stretched in order to better fill the available space, and the reflectivity scale is shown on the left side of the image. For sectors with initial angle <90° and end angle >90° the image stretching is not applied and the reflectivity scale is shown on the right side of the image. The following figure shows images of each of the three cases.

Fig. 2-9 Stretching effect of the product image according to the scanned angle

sector


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3. Product registration file The RHI Product Generator is supplied together with the product registration file dati_registrazione.txt (.txt type with renamed extension). The content of the file is described in Fig. 3-1.

Fig. 3-1 Product registration file

The registration file includes all the necessary information for the correct registration of the RHI Product Generator in Eldes radar management environment. For further information about the meaning of each field refer to Eldes specification concerning the creation of products generation tools compatible with the radar management environment. The last field of the registration file is necessary for the configuration of the products viewer integrated in Eldes environment and strictly depends on the type of product. Through the ToolTip parameter, using a macro system (for a detailed description refer to the above mentioned specification), the calculations to be associated to the dynamic ToolTip lines available in the images viewer are univocally determined. Regarding the RHI product the unique information given is the reflectivity range associated to the specific cell pointed by the mouse.




4. Colortable file The RHI Product Generator creates graphic products mapping the reflectivity levels with colors which are specified in a proper colortable file. A colortable file is provided as an integral part of the package but it is possible, at any time, to change it modifying the association between colors and reflectivity levels or modifying the specified levels number. An example of the colortable file supplied with the RHI Product Generator is shown in the following figure.

Fig. 4-1 Colortable file

The colortable file, Colortbl_RHI.txt, is composed of five columns. The first column shows a sequential number, the second column shows the reflectivity levels, columns three, four and five show the three RGB (expressed in 256 levels) which specify the color associated to the specific reflectivity range. The colortable reading logic is the following: from -inf to -20dBz the color [0 0 5] (almost black background) is applied, from -20dBz to -15dBz the color [165 255 255] is applied and from +68dBz to +inf dBz the color [165 0 142] is applied. The colortable can be changed adding, reducing or modifying existing colors and levels provided that the following conditions are fulfilled:

1) the color [0 0 5] [almost black background] must always be associated to the first reflectivity range

2) the reserved color [242 0 0] must not be used in the colortable in order to allow the textual information to be superimposed

3) the number of the colortable lines must be equal to (multiple of 8)+1, that is 9,17, 25,33,...

WR-10X RHI Product Generator - USP · WR-10X RHI Product Generator User Manual Document code: ELDES...

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