Ground clutter censoring for airborne weather radar employing DEM

A ground clutter rejection method based on Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is proposed, which can be used to censor the clutter when airborne weather radar operates in weather mode. The theory of visibility analysis is used to identify the ranges with clutter. The terrain altitude in DEM and the height of points at the line-of-sight is compared, and the ranges where the beam crosses the surface or mountain are identified. Then these ranges with clutter are edited and rejected, so the suppression is implemented directly in time domain. In virtue of the proposed algorithm, the ranges where the clutter exists can be computed accurately using radar parameters and DEM. Finally, the validity and effectivity of the presented method is verified by processing the measured airborne data.