Simulation and analysis of wind turbine radar echo based on 3-D scattering point model

Authors: JIANGONG ZHANG, BIN HAO, BO TANG, LI HUANG, JIAWEI YANG

Abstract: Wind turbine (WT) arrays in wind farms can cause serious interference on nearby radar stations. This interference could be filtered out if wind turbine radar echo (WTRE) can be obtained accurately. Considering the singleness of in-field experiments, numerical simulation became the majority among such works, but few of them reached necessary accuracy. Therefore, we propose a solution method of WTRE based on three-dimensional (3-D) scattering point model. Firstly, we use the nonuniform rational B-spline to build the 3-D model of WT. Secondly, based on the method of moments (MoM), the Rao-Wilton-Gisson (RWG) basis function is adopted to discretize the integral area of WTRE into triangular elements, which ensures the continuity of induced current on the surface of WT. Taking the centers of triangular elements as scattering point source, we obtain the 3-D point scattering model of WT, which is then used to derive the echo equation of WT and eventually time-frequency domain waveform of WTRE. The result presents high accuracy comparing with the traditional method and scaled model experiments in an anechoic chamber. Further analysis indicates that the proposed method can be used to estimate important parameters of an operating WT accurately.

Keywords: Experimental measurement, scattering point model, wind turbine radar echo

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