Clutter suppression for low altitude wind shear detection by doppler weather radars
Summary
Low altitude wind shear (LAWS) has been recognized as a major cause of commercial airline aircraft accidents in the United States. The FAA is actively conducting the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) program to detect and identify dangerous wind fields at and around airports using Doppler radar techniques. Clutter poses a major challenge to successful operation of such a system due to the need to measure the return from low cross section wind tracers in the presence of close-in clutter from stationary objects. The paper describes the overall LAWS detection scenario with particular emphasis on microburst and gust front detection before presenting detailed experimental and analytical results on the suppression of ground clutter using a combination of: 1) subclutter visibility in excess of 50 dB by the use of high pass digital filters with narrow stopbands, and 2) interclutter visibility (ICV) algorithms which utilize the spatially distributed nature of the weather phenomena being measured, and 3) pencil beam antennas with readily achievable sidelobes.