Doppler Properties of Polyphase Coded Pulse Compression Waveforms

Doppler properties of the Frank polyphase code and the recently derived P1, P2, P3, and P4 polyphase codes are investigated and compared. An approximate 4 dB cyclic variation of the peak compressed signal is shown to occur as the Doppler frequency increases. The troughs in the peak-signal response occur whenever the total phase shift across the uncompressed pulse, due to Doppler, is an odd multiple of π radians. It is shown that while the P3 and P4 codes have larger zero-Doppler peak sidelobes than the other codes, the P3 and P4 codes degrade less as the Doppler frequency increases. Also, the effects of amplitude weighting and receiver bandlimiting for both zero and nonzero Doppler are investigated.