Conventional radars operated at 5GHz can detect precipitation particles but are not able to detect
particles in clouds because their sizes, less than a few tens microns, are much smaller that the wavelengths and, therefore, their cross sections are quite small. The cross sections of particles increase rapidly with frequency in Rayleigh scattering region. Radar observations of cloud particles at millimeter waves, which have been realized recently, have much more sensitive. Several groups have reported the development and preliminary observational results that demonstrate powerful performances to investigate cloud particles.
We designed and developed a cloud profiling radar at 94 GHz named FALCON-I. In this paper,
we present performance and observational data of FALCON-I.