Improving performance of staggered-PRT clutter filtering for longer PRTs via shrewd windowing

The data acquisition strategy named Staggered Pulse Repetition Time (SPRT) with stagger ratio 2/3 is used to mitigate range-velocity ambiguity in weather radars. SPRT has a problem: it requires an intricate procedure for spectral clutter filtering due to the non-uniform spacing of SPRT data samples. Although a clutter filtering procedure was developed, tested and named Spectral Adaptive Harmonic Identification (SACHI), it could only provide acceptable performance for pairs of PRT with shorter duration (i.e., 1 ms and 1.5 ms). Pairs of PRT with longer duration (i.e., 2 ms and 3 ms) are desirable to extend range coverage. Aka, there is no benefit in mitigating range-velocity ambiguity if only short ranges can be achieved. This paper shows a methodology for improving the performance of SPRT for longer PRTs via shrewd windowing.