Pulse compression with -65 dB sidelobe level for a spaceborne meteorological radar

With a breadboard activity, funded by ESA, ALCATEL ESPACE associated with four other European companies, demonstrates the feasibility of an all digital generation and compression system, operating in real time and meeting range sidelobes of the compressed pulse lower than -65 dB despite a low pulse bandwidth x pulse duration product. The chosen pulse compression technique consists in a frequency domain processing taking into account distortions due mainly to IF filters and non linear behavior of the HPA by the implementation of an automatic compensation procedure. After a complete description of the processing technique and the breadboard, this paper presents achieved performances in particular in presence of severe non linear distortions, sinusoidal amplitude and phase ripples