Abstract: A bistatic Doppler weather radar system consists of one conventional Doppler weather radar and one or more remote passive receivers with low-gain antennas. It is among the new techniques in the atmospheric wind field detection. The first atmospheric observation by a bistatic Doppler radar in China is done by the National Research Project, "Mechanism and Predict Theory of Disastrous Weather over China". The meteorological echo data are obtained in Hefei by a bistatic Doppler radar made in China in 2004.Antenna setting altitude design and side-lobe contamination are key problems in the design and application of the bistatic Doppler weather radar. Based on the principles of bistatic Doppler radar observation, the problems mentioned above are studied. For operational application of a bistatic Doppler weather radar, a design for radar antenna installation with parameter of target detection height is described, which is convenient in calculation and practicable in operation. For a specified detection height, the longer baseline requires the higher antenna installation of transmitter or receiver. In addition, the side-lobe contamination is an important problem in bistatic radar technique, since its receiver has wide-beamwidth antenna. Also, the main contamination causes are analyzed. A method of reducing or eliminating the contamination is proposed, by which may control the bistatic radar observation data quality.