While a geostationary weather radar would enable unprecedented monitoring of hurricanes and other severe weather, surface clutter could seriously limit its performance. The large incidence angles necessary for wide-area coverage, combined with the footprint size could cause surface clutter to obscure atmospheric return up to several km above the surface. The authors describe a Doppler filtering approach to clutter suppression and show simulation results. They find that Doppler filtering can significantly reduce the surface return, bringing surface clutter to acceptable levels. The authors then consider this approach when a staggered pulse repetition frequency is used to improve the maximum unambiguous velocity. They find that a method previously developed for ground-based weather radars can be successfully applied.
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