Pulse compression for weather radar

Abstract

The next century's advanced weather radars will be able to accommodate pulse compression waveforms and phased array electronically scanned antennas to meet higher time and space resolution requirements. We have investigated several coded waveforms and compression filters for weather radar applications. Candidate waveforms include Barker bi-phase coded as well as linear and non-linear FM coded waveforms. Minimum integrated sidelobe (inverse) filters are demonstrated to be superior to matched filters for compression processing of distributed weather echoes. We describe the Doppler sensitivity of the waveform and filters by plotting the integrated and peak sidelobe ratios vs. Doppler shift. We demonstrate these effects on both ground clutter and 50 dB reflectivity transition weather data taken with the 3 cm ELDORA testbed radar.