Simulations of Ground Clutter Filter Design and Velocity Dealiasing of Dual-PRF Signals for X-Band Weather Radar

Abstract

The use of nonuniform sampled sequence effectively extends the unambiguous range and velocity of the Doppler weather radar but makes the ground clutter mitigation problem more challenging. This paper presents a clutter filter method applied to dual pulse repetition frequency (i.e., dual-PRF) scheme with a finite impulse response (FIR) filter bank designed under the minimum mean-square error criterion. This adaptive filtering method comprehensively considers the magnitude and phase characteristics in the frequency domain and yields desired autocorrelation estimation. Simulation of a clutter-contaminated weather signal model for X-band weather radar proves that, although the filter bank is not generated in real time, it can provide effective clutter suppression in almost all cases we expect and has a good performance of meteorological variables estimation.