Joint Waveform and Receive Filter Design for Pulse Compression in Weather Radar Systems

The meteorological industry is currently exploring Solid State Weather Radar (SSWR) systems, a new technology that emits minimal transmission power, to minimize harm to the environment and reduce system cost. However, accurately estimating reflectivity for each polarization and decreasing the blind range present significant challenges for SSWR systems that use pulse compression. In these systems, transmit waveforms and receive filters play a crucial role in enhancing estimation accuracy, while implementing partial correlation can reduce the blind range. In this research, we propose a novel joint design technique for transmit waveforms and receive filters in weather radar systems using the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) and Coordinate Descent (CD) optimization approaches. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique by iteratively solving nonconvex design problems and showcasing the convergence of the objective function. Furthermore, we assess the impact of our proposed waveform and receive filter, as well as the blind range, on dual-polarized real weather radar data, illustrating the practicality of our approach. Our research provides a promising solution for the challenges faced by SSWR systems and offers a sustainable and efficient solution for the industry’s needs.