Suppression of Clutter Residue in Weather Radar Reveals Birds' Corridors Over Urban Area

An adaptive spectral technique for ground clutter and noise suppression in weather radar echoes is presented. This technique detects weak echoes that are masked by the residuals from ground clutter. The technique is demonstrated on two clear air cases observed with Doppler weather radar. After adaptive suppression of ground clutter and its residue, features appear over the Oklahoma City urban area where otherwise none could be seen. These are interpreted as birds' corridors between two lakes and along a river.

[1]  Svetlana Bachmann,et al.  Spectral Density of Polarimetric Variables Separating Biological Scatterers in the VAD Display , 2007 .

[2]  Mark Yeary,et al.  Adaptive Technique for Clutter and Noise Supression in Weather Radar Exposes Weak Echoes Over an Urban Area , 2007, 2007 IEEE/SP 14th Workshop on Statistical Signal Processing.

[3]  A. R. T. Schuur,et al.  Observations and Classification of Echoes with the Polarimetric WSR-88 D radar Prepared by : , 2003 .

[4]  D. Zrnic,et al.  Doppler Radar and Weather Observations , 1984 .

[5]  Dusan Zrnic,et al.  Observations of insects and birds with a polarimetric radar , 1998, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[6]  P. Hildebrand,et al.  Objective Determination of the Noise Level in Doppler Spectra , 1974 .

[7]  H. Urkowitz,et al.  Obtaining Spectral Moments By Discrete Fourier Transform With Noise removal In Radar Meteorology , 1992, [Proceedings] IGARSS '92 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

[8]  Richard L. Ice,et al.  OPTIMIZING CLUTTER FILTERING IN THE WSR-88 D , 2006 .

[9]  J. Golden.  Clutter mitigation in weather radar systems filter design & analysis , 2005, Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, 2005. SSST '05..

[10]  Monson H. Hayes,et al.  Statistical Digital Signal Processing and Modeling , 1996 .

[11]  Timothy J. Lang,et al.  Observations of Quasi-Symmetric Echo Patterns in Clear Air with the CSU–CHILL Polarimetric Radar , 2004 .

[12]  Gary L. Achtemeier,et al.  The Use of Insects as Tracers for “Clear-Air” Boundary-Layer Studies by Doppler Radar , 1991 .

[13]  A. D. Siggia,et al.  Gaussian model adaptive processing (GMAP) for improved ground clutter cancellation and moment calculation , 2004 .

[14]  Gaspare Galati,et al.  Advanced Radar Techniques and Systems , 1993 .