Clutter rejection for Doppler weather radars which use staggered pulses

Several methods for canceling ground clutter in Doppler weather radars which operate with staggered pulse repetition times (PRTs) are investigated. A scheme is developed which consists of two filters that operate sequentially, so that the overall filter is time-varying, with periodically changing coefficients. This filter is analyzed theoretically and through simulations for a stagger ratio of 3/2, which extends the unambiguous velocity interval. The amplitude characteristic of the filter over this interval is very good, but the phase characteristic, which is nonlinear in a small part of the interval, requires that a special decision logic be used for velocity estimation