Millimeter-wave solid-state cloud and precipitation radars and signal processing

Advances in millimeter wave solid-state power amplifier technology over the past decade have led to the development of a new generation of compact, lightweight cloud and precipitation radars. Solid-state power amplifiers (SSPAs) have lower peak power than traditional vacuum tube transmitters, but generally are capable of operating at much higher duty cycle. Taking advantage of the high duty cycle of SSPAs usually requires some signal processing and/or pulse compression technique to achieve similar sensitivity at comparable range resolution. FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave) radars take full advantage of SSPAs capable of CW (continuous wave) operation, but the usual requirement for separate transmit and receive antennas is often impractical. Radars that combine a pulse compression waveform with a short pulse offset in frequency are now commonly used to operate at duty cycles as high as 10-20%. This paper reviews the latest solid-state millimeter wave radar designs, benefits, and limitations and describes operating modes and signal processing techniques that are especially well suited for single antenna operation. High PRF (pulse repetition frequency) operation using coherent power (single lag covariance) provides automatic noise cancellation without requiring explicit noise sampling. A novel phase coding technique employing Chu-codes with quadratically-increasing phase can be used to separate ambiguous signals when running at MHz-level PRFs. Weather data measured using the quadratic phase coding (QPC) technique with a solid-state Ka-band radar running at 3.1 MHz PRF is presented. This data was gathered at a transmitter duty cycle of approximately 50 percent and exhibits a 20 dB sensitivity improvement when compared to conventional short pulse data gathered at the same range resolution.