Asymmetric pulse compression waveform design for spaceborne meteorological radars

A novel asymmetric nonlinear FM waveform design technique for future spaceborne meteorological radars is described. Asymmetric compressed pulse range sidelobe patterns below -40 dB have been obtained, which can be reduced to -60 dB by suitable amplitude weighting in the receiver filter. The ambiguity function of the asymmetric FM signal shows a degradation in compressed pulse range sidelobe level of 0.2 dB for Doppler frequency offsets up to 150 kHz.