The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is a joint U.S.-Japan   satellite mission to monitor tropical and subtropical precipitation   and to estimate its associated latent heating.
                                    
The TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR), the first of its kind in space, is an electronically scanning radar, operating at 13.8 GHz that measures the 3-D rainfall distribution over both land and ocean, and defines the layer depth of the precipitation.
                                    
The 1C21 calculates the effective radar reflectivity factor at 13.8 GHz without any propagation loss (due to rain or any other atmospheric gas) correction (Zm). Therefore, the Zm value can be calculated just by applying a radar equation for volume scatter with PR system parameters. The noise-equivalent Zm is about 21 dBZ. Through the subtraction of the system noise, the Zm value as small as 16 or 18 dBZ are still usable although the data quality is marginal.  In 1C21, all echoes stored in 1B21 are converted to "dBZ" unit. This is not relevant for "non-rain" echo; however, this policy is adopted so that the 1B21 and 1C21 product format should be as close as possible except for the following points:
                                    
- Radar quantity is Zm in dBZ unit instead of received power (dBm).
- Data at echo-free range bins judged in 1B21 are replaced with a dummy
   value.
                                    
The data are stored in the Hierarchical Data Format (HDF), which includes both core and product specific metadata applicable to the PR measurements.  A file contains a single orbit of data with a file size of about 139 MB (uncompressed). The HDF-EOS "swath" structure is used to accommodate the actual geophysical data arrays. There are 16 files each of PR 1B21 and 1C21 data produced per day.
                                    
Spatial coverage is between 38 degrees North and 38 degrees South, owing to the 35 degree inclination of the TRMM satellite. This orbit provides extensive coverage in the tropics and allows each location to be covered at a different local time each day, enabling the analysis of the diurnal cycle of precipitation. There are, in general, 9150 scans along the orbit, with each scan consisting of 49 rays.  The scan width is about 220 km.