Lecture II

Introduction to Radar Signal Processing

Dr. Twe Ta Oo
Lecturer
Faculty of Computer Systems and Technologies
University of Computer Studies, Yangon

1 Acknowledgement: 4/29/2020
Most of the contents are prepared according to the “radar training course at BIRM”.
Contents
 Introduction
 Radar Theory
 Propagation of EM Waves
 Weather Radar Types
 Radar Equation
 Weather Radar Signal Processing Steps

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Six Steps of Radar Signal Processor
es
lu
va
I/Q

Ground Clutter
Pulse Compression
Suppression

Parameter Quality Control or To radar map

Estimation Thresholding generation

 Its purpose is to determine the signal power, radial velocity,

and spectrum width from the received echo signals.

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Pulse Compression
 Long pulses are better for received signal strength;
 Short pulses are better for good range detection;
 Accurately detects closely situated targets

 WHY not just get a transmitter

that outputs more power???
 High power transmitters
 require high-voltage power supplies
 reliability problems
 safety issues
 bigger, heavier, costlier, …

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Pulse Compression (cont.)
 As the transmitted peak power is low, we need to transmit a long-width
pulse to detect the weak signal.
 To solve unacceptable low range resolution problem, use
 Pulse compression
 Transmit  use pulse with changing frequency;
 Receive  process the received signal using “matched filter”;

Frequency modulated pulse

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 Matched Filtering

Before Match Filtering

After Match Filtering

Convolution

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Ground Clutter Suppression

 Radar echo is composed of:

 backscatter from target of interest
 interference – from other radars
 backscatter from unwanted objects – ground, sea, rain, chaff, birds, ground traffic

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Ground Clutter Suppression (cont.)
 Weather phenomena of interest in radar meteorology occur near the
bottom of the troposphere.
 For the radar to see those phenomena, scans at quite low elevation
angles are needed.
 Unfortunately, when the elevation angle is low, the ground clutter is
much bigger than the cloud or rain;
 So it is needed to suppress the ground clutter to get a more accurate
value of the weather.

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Ground Clutter Suppression (cont.)
 How to do Ground Clutter suppression
 Time domain filter
 IIR (infinite impulse response) filter
 Frequency domain filters
 Fixed Width Clutter Filters
 Variable Width Clutter Filter
 Gaussian Model Adaptive Processing (GMAP)

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Parameter Estimation
 These parameters are what we want to know by the weather radar
 Reflectivity (Z) >>> direct estimate of rain rate
 Velocity (V) >>> speed and direction of clouds
 Spectrum width (W) >>> wind shear? turbulence?
 Methods: PPP and FFT

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Pulse Pair Processing (PPP)
 sk is the received signal
 R(0), R(1), and R(2) are the autocorrelation
1 N 1 *
R  0    sk sk I PPP  R  0 
N k 0

1 N 2 VPPP  arg  R  1 
R  1   k 1 k
N  1 k 0
s s *
4 Ts

1 N 3 2 R  0  2 R  1
R  2  
N  2 k 0
sk  2 sk* WPPP 
4 Ts
ln
R  1

4 Ts
ln
3 R  2

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Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)
 Sk is the Fourier transform of sk
N 1


f k  Sk
VFFT  k 0N 1
2
 Sk
k 0

N 1 2
 2VFFT 
  f
 k
k 0 

    Sk
WFFT  N 1
2
S
k 0
k

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Z-R Relation
Pr RadarZeq. dBZdB scale Rain Rate Z-R relation

where a and b are constants, R is

the rain rate, and Z is reflectivity;

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Interpretation of V and W

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Quality Control (or) Thresholding
 To reject data which may include
 weak signal power
 unreliable estimates of Doppler parameters
 echo of undesired origin, e.g. birds, planes
 noise and interferences

Parameter Description Threshold

dBZ Reflectivity with clutter correction LOG and CCOR
dBT Reflectivity without clutter correction LOG
V Mean velocity SQI and CCOR
W Spectrum width SQI and CCOR

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Radar Map Generation

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Summary
 Radar − radio detection and ranging
 Core functions − MTI, imaging radar, now weather radar
 Weather radar types − L, S, C, X, etc.
 Weather signal processing steps
 Pulse compression, ground clutter suppression, parameter
estimation, and quality control

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Research Interest
 Ground clutter suppression − filter design
 Parameter estimation − PPP & FFT improvements
 Quality control − filtering noise and unwanted returns
 Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE) − rainfall distribution
 Development of Z-R relation
 Hydrometer classification − hail? snow? rain?, etc.

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 Thank YOU!

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