Nonlinear iterative optimization approaches for pulse compression in weather radars

The problem of pulse compression in weather radars is particularly challenging due to the distributed nature of the targets and to the high gradients of reflectivity that can be encountered along range. This poses strong requirements in terms of low energy of the sidelobes and low peaks of the output of the receive filter, in order to retrieve correctly the range profiles of reflectivity. The pulse compression approaches presented in this paper are based both on a matched filter and on a mismatched receiver. The pursued objective is minimum sidelobe energy and peak level through a strategy based on nonlinear iterative optimization.