Application and issues of SZ phase coding for NEXRAD

Mitigation of range-velocity ambiguities is an on going concern of weathers radars. SZ phase coding of the transmitted pulses is a now well know technique for resolving range overlaid echoes without lengthening the pulse repetition time which would decrease the unambiguous velocity. SZ phase coding has been approved for installment on the NEXRAD network and should be deployed in the near future. This paper reports some of the results and issues of using SZ phase coding and also makes suggestion for improvements in the SZ algorithm. One topic investigated is the effects of the time series window type and length. Longer windows mean better SZ performance statistics and better clutter filter performance. Also, the integration of SZ with other technologies such as super resolution data data is discussed. Experimental data gathered with NCAR's S-Pol is used to demonstrate suggested signal processing techniques.