WR-10X PPI Product Generator - USP · WR-10X PPI Product Generator User Manual Document code: ELDES OM-11336-04 Proprietary Information Page 7 of 15 1. General Information This manual

WR-10X PPI Product

Generator

User Manual

Document code:

OM-11336-04

WR-10X PPI Product Generator

User Manual

ELDES

Document code:

Page 2 of 15 Proprietary Information OM-11336-04

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 PPI Product Generator User Manual

Document code: ELDES

OM-11336-04 Proprietary Information Page 3 of 15

Summary

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

1.1 PRODUCT CONFIGURATION MODE........................................................................................... 8

1.2 PRODUCT GENERATION MODE .............................................................................................. 12

2. PRODUCT REGISTRATION FILE ...................................................................................................... 14

3. COLORTABLE FILE ....................................................................................................................... 15


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List of Figures

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

FIG. 1-2 COMPARISON BETWEEN THE SURFACE-TYPE (LEFT) AND THE CONTOUR-TYPE (RIGHT) INTERPOLATIONS ........................................................................................................................... 9

FIG. 1-3 COMPARISON BETWEEN THE SURFACE-TYPE (LEFT) AND THE CONTOUR-TYPE INTERPOLATIONS WITH THE MEDIAN FILTER APPLICATION .......................................................................................... 10

FIG. 1-4 LOG FILE ................................................................................................................................ 11

FIG. 1-5 AVAILABLE INFORMATION IN THE PPI PRODUCT, UTC TIME FORMAT (ABOVE), CEST TIME FORMAT (BELOW)...................................................................................................................................... 12

FIG. 1-6 PPI PRODUCT IN TEXT FORMAT ............................................................................................... 13

FIG. 2-1 PRODUCT REGISTRATION FILE ................................................................................................. 14

FIG. 3-1 COLORTABLE FILE .................................................................................................................. 15




Revisions record sheet


User Manual

Document code: OM-11336-04

Date Main changes Rev.

September 2008 First version (release 1.1)

Second version (release 1.2) 01

July 2010 Third version (release 1.2.2) 02

May 2012 Third version (release 1.2.2) 03

February 2013 Updated Fig. 2.4 and 2.6 New 14 bit format

04


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List of Acronyms

Acronym Meaning

CEST Central Europe Summer Time

GUI Graphical User Interface

MCR Matlab Compiler Runtime

PPI Plan Position Indicator

RGB Red-Green-Blue

UTC Universal Time Coordinated




1. General Information This manual describes the generation tool operation properly developed by Eldes for the PPI Product Generation. The PPI 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 PPI 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 PPI Product Generator supports two operating modes: 'product configuration' and 'product generation'. The PPI Product Generator package includes:

• the PPI_Constructor.dll product library,

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

• a colortable file, Colortbl_PPI.txt, necessary to the PPI graphic product generation.

The PPI 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 PPI 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 in Fig. 2-1.

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 PPI Product Generator has the function to generate 'n' PPI products related to 'n' azimuth scans collected during the 'Scan' execution dated on (yyyymmddhhmm) passed to the PPI_Costructor function as input parameter.




The PPI products returned by the PPI_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 PPI 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 PPI 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 PPI 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. The following figure shows two representations of the same thunderstorm phenomenon generated, respectively, by the Surface-type and the Contour-type interpolation:

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


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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 box called 'Save product generation log on file' has the function to enable and disable the specific log file update related to the PPI Product Generator. If this option is enabled without an existing log file, a new log file will be created. The PPI Product Generator log files are generated each month and show, in a text format, all the available information regarding the PPI products generation. The log file name fulfils the following procedure:

PPI-Generator[yyyymm].log.txt The log files are saved in the 6\ WR-10X\Bin\LogFiles. proper folder.




The typical content of a log file is described Fig. 2-4.

Fig. 2-4 Log file

For each execution of the product generator are also reported some parameters relating to the radar configuration (these parameters are available as contained in the header of the integrated data file processed by the product generator). 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.


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2.2 Product generation mode

The PPI Product Generator called by an higher level application generates the PPI 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 PPI products, search path for the binary files to be processed for the PPI 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 assume the value 0 or 1 in order to apply, respectively, the visualization of the date in UTC format (Greenwich time) or CEST format (local time).

The PPI Product Generator saves all products in the6\ WR-10X\Bin\DataFiles\PPI proper folder. All the generated files, apart from the specific extension, follow the same procedure concerning the name construction:

PPI-rnn- yyyymmddhhmm -B-RRRR-rrrr-aaaa-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 range resolution expressed in meters, the azimuth resolution expressed in tenths of a degree, the specific scan elevation expressed in tenths of degrees and an 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. 2-5 Available information in the PPI product, UTC time format (above), CEST time format (below)

If the PPI 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 PPI products are generated in text format, one for each binary file. The PPI 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. The subsequent columns show the reflectivity data, remapped to 16384 levels, of each cell. An example of the PPI product in text format is in Fig. 2-6.

Fig. 2-6 PPI Product in text format


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3. Product registration file The PPI Product Generator is supplied together with the product registration file dati_registrazione.rwx (.txt type with renamed extension). The content of the file is described in the following figure.

Fig. 3-1 Product registration file

The registration file includes all the necessary information for the correct registration of the PPI 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. A list of information related to the PPI product is given below:

1) The distance expressed in Km from the radar site of the cell pointed by the mouse (Distance).

2) The height above sea level expressed in Km of the cell pointed by the mouse (Height).

3) The reflectivity values range expressed in dBz in which the reflectivity associated to the cell pointed by the mouse is placed (Reflectivity).

In particular, knowing the concerned cell range (r), the height of the radar site above sea

level (h0) and the elevation angle of the displayed PPI (ϕ),the height (h) related to the concerned cell is calculated applying the following relation:

( )( )ϕcos0

×+= rhh




4. Colortable file The PPI 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 PPI Product Generator is shown in the following figure.

Fig. 4-1 Colortable file

The colortable file, Colortbl_PPI.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 0] (black) 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 0] [black] 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,....

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WR-10X PPI Product Generator - USP · WR-10X PPI Product Generator User Manual Document code: ELDES OM-11336-04 Proprietary Information Page 7 of 15 1. General Information This manual