Radar Wind Profilers
The LAP® Series Radar Wind Profilers were the first on market in 1991 and are available today in their third generation. They reliably provide continuous and real-time tropospheric profiles of horizontal wind speed, wind direction, vertical wind speed and turbulence with high resolution in time and height.
The operation is based on the scattering of electromagnetic pulses at inhomogeneities in the air with subsequent Doppler analysis of the backscattered signal. The wind vector is derived using the Doppler Beam-Swinging method.
The LAP® Series Radar Wind Profilers support a wide range of applications in aviation, science, air quality and weather forecast. They work automatically and virtually maintenance free. LAP® Series Radar Wind Profilers are economic to operate and suited for operation in a variety of environments such as instrumental networks or unmanned, remote sites.
This is the standard model for reliable and continuous wind measurements with proven performance.
The larger antenna aperture of this model provides the highest performance and clutter resilience that the most critical applications demand.
This model operates on a lower radio frequency and achieves the highest measurement range.
All LAP® Series Radar Wind Profilers use phased-array antennas. This means that the antennas consist of a large number of individual elements which are emitting and receiving with varying phase relations. The same antennas can point into and receive from different directions without movement and the whole antenna areas are used at any pointing direction, resulting in maximum efficiency (power-aperture product). Since only one static antenna area is used for any pointing direction, installation does not require much space and with the LAP®3000, the clutter screen is even effectively integrated to provide an optimum of ground clutter suppression.
The new SIRP Digital IF Processor was specifically designed for radar wind profilers and offers characteristics never found in wind profiler signal processing before. It combines vertical signal oversampling, 16 chip binary pulse coding, true Gaussian matched filters, and freely programmable height gates. The revolutionary ACNS cancels distinct radio frequency interferences and improves data quality at sites suffering from radio pollution. All these features result in higher data quality, better height coverage and a perfect match to the user’s specific needs. The SIRP Digital IF Processor interfaces to the control computer using USB 3.0, supporting the highest data rates.
The SRun Operation Software for Windows 11 / Windows 10 brings an entirely new level of performance, comfort, and flexibility to the world of wind profilers. A variety of graphical data representations, data output formats and data transfer options match all needs and data environments. SRun provides real-time data output during the measurements and also permits the user to reprocess previously recorded data using different system settings. All software-control is menu-driven and an auto-configuration option even optimizes the system without the need of user interaction.
Besides performance, system uptime is a key factor determining the quality of a radar wind profiler, many of them being operated within critical application environments such as airports. The LAP® Series Radar Wind Profilers have been manufactured for years in large quantities by the market leader, which results in an outstanding reliability. Moreover, a fully modular design allows most repairs to be done within minutes. Scintec keeps a large number of modules on stock for worldwide distribution if ever needed.
Modules of the LAP® Series Radar Wind Profilers are equipped with built-in diagnosis tools which digitally communicate with a dedicated Monitoring Unit. The Monitoring Unit continuously verifies the proper function of all components. It creates and logs an extensive functionality report in user-defined intervals. The system status is stored together with the output data and optionally reported to the user's data environment over protocols such as SNMP. A summary of the system status is displayed on a toggling monitoring screen.
For all LAP® Series Radar Wind Profilers, a Radio Acoustic Sounding System (RASS) is available for remote temperature measurements. Compared to other methods of remote temperature sensing, the RASS technique is unsurpassed when it comes to accuracy and vertical resolution. RASS works with all kinds of clouds and precipitation and is longterm calibration-free.