Validation of pulse compression techniques for meteorological functions

Abstract

A major technology barrier to the application of pulse compression techniques in meteorological radar is the presence of range sidelobes which mask and corrupt observations of weak weather phenomena in areas of strong extended meteorological scatterers or point target returns. Techniques for suppressing range sidelobes are well known, but without prior knowledge of the scattering medium's velocity distribution their performance degrades rapidly in the presence of doppler. Recent investigations have presented a range sidelobe suppression technique. The thrust of the work described in this article is the extension of previous simulations to the transmission of dispersed/coded waveform pulses using the ELDORA X-Band weather research radar located at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Foothills Laboratory. This study shows that the use of Barker coded pulses along with pulse compression and doppler tolerant range sidelobe suppression provides: (1) increased sensitivity over a simple pulse of the same peak power, and nominal receive bandwidth by a factor equal to the time-bandwidth product, and (2) accurate spectral moment estimates.