Range-velocity mitigation via SZ phase coding for NEXRAD WSR-88D radars

A fundamental limitation of pulsed weather radar is range-velocity ambiguity. Increasing (decreasing) the PRT (pulse repetition time) increases (decreases) the unambiguous range while decreasing (increasing) the unambiguous velocity. It has recently been shown that SZ phase coding of the transmit pulses allows for increased unambiguous range while maintaining a constant unambiguous velocity. To date statistical SZ phase coding performance has been investigated using numerically simulated Gaussian shaped weather spectra. However, experimental weather spectra are frequently non-Gaussian in shape, and thus SZ performance evaluation with experimental data would be more realistic. In this paper SZ phase coding is applied to experimental data offline and the results are compared to numerical simulations.