Polarimetric optimization for clutter suppression in spectral polarimetric weather radar

For the polarimetric-Doppler weather radar, sometimes there are artifacts caused by radar system itself or external sources displaying in the radar plan position indicator (PPI). These artifacts are not confined to specific range bins and also they are non-stationary when observed in the Doppler domain. This paper puts forward a method to suppress such clutter by designing the generalized spectral linear depolarization ratio (GsLDR) filter. This filter combines the optimal polarization contrast enhancement (OPCE) technique and the double spectral linear depolarization ratio (DsLDR) filter. The success of this filter is mainly based on the polarimetric property difference between precipitation and clutter. The X-band polarimetric-Doppler IRCTR Drizzle Radar (IDRA) data are used to qualitatively and quantitatively verify the performance of the newly proposed filter for radar artifacts suppression.