Vaisala weather radar team wins Finnish Engineering Award

The 2011 Finnish Engineering Award has been awarded to Vaisala’s weather radar team. Pentti Karhunen, Henry Andersson, Petri Haapanen, Reino Keränen, Timo Lyly, Juha Salmivaara and Rainer Sanmark receive the award for developing and productizing Vaisala’s dual polarization Doppler weather radar. The 25,000 euro Award was announced today in Helsinki.

The weather radar team developed and productized Vaisala’s dual polarization Doppler weather radar, which was the first of its kind in the world specifically designed to provide dual polarization capability. The development took place in 2002-08, and the new radar was launched in 2007. Since then, orders have been received from 13 different countries.

The winning team worked on the weather radar development in close collaboration. Pentti Karhunen was responsible for concept design and leading the project, Henry Andersson for RF and automation design, Rainer Sanmark for antenna and pedestal mechanics, Reino Keränen for algorithm and software development, Petri Haapanen for transmitter integration, Timo Lyly for RF receiver design and processor integration, and Juha Salmivaara for antenna integration and system testing.

In addition, extensive research collaboration was carried out with Colorado State University, University of Helsinki and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, for example, in developing dual polarization applications.

The Finnish Engineering Award is presented by the Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers TEK and the Tekniska Föreningen i Finland TFiF. The Award is granted annually to a person or team that has made significant contribution to Finnish technological expertise. The award-winning engineering work may be characterized by an element of creativity, originality, or by practical implementation of the idea or theory in question. The work’s commercial and economic aspects are also considered. The very first Finnish Engineering Award was granted in 1981.