Application of empirical mode decomposition for denoising and ground clutter removal on weather radar signals

AbstractProper detection and estimation of signal and noise power measurements are important to generate the best quality of meteorological data products such as Reflectivity, Velocity and Spectrum width. In order to obtain the best quality radar products, it is desirable to compute meteorological parameters by estimating noise power and removal of ground clutter. This paper attempts to study the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) denoising techniques on weather radar signals in the presence of noise and ground clutter. Different methods of EMD based denoising techniques have been considered and applied to the weather signals to check the best performance of the denoising and clutter removal technique. The limitations of these methods are brought out through simulation analysis. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a new method for denoising and clutter removal in weather signals. This method is a modified version of the correlation-based EMD Interval Threshold (IT) measurements. Moments have been estimated from these techniques and compared with conventional methods like Pulse pair techniques.KEYWORDS: Weather radar remote sensingX-band polarimetric Doppler weather radarbackscattered signalsEMD denoisingIMFsspectral moments AcknowledgementsThe data used in this paper was collected from NARL, Gadanki. The authors would like to thank the NARL people for providing data. The authors would also like to thank all their colleagues from the Radar Development Area of ISTRAC/ISRO.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsRamyakrishna EnugondaRamyakrishna Enugonda received B.tech in Electronics and Communications and M.tech in Space Technology and Applications from Chadalawada Ramnamma Engineering College and from the SV University, Tirupati, India respectively. She joined as a Research fellow in ISTRAC-ISRO in 2018. She is currently pursuing PhD in the department of Avionics, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Trivandrum. Her main research area includes in the field of weather and atmospheric radar signal processing and Turbulence studies.V K AnandanV.K. Anandan received his M.Sc. and M.Tech degree from Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin and PhD in Electronics & Communication Engineering and Physics from Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, India. He has done his post-doctoral research at National Central University, Taiwan. Joined Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1991 and presently working as Deputy Director. Involved in system design and development of Phased array atmospheric radars and Polarimetric Doppler Weather radar systems, Tracking radars, sodars, multi-channel receiver developments and post beam steering techniques employed to radar systems. His area of interest includes Phased array radar system developments, multiple satellite tracking and commanding system, signal processing algorithm developments, scientific studies related to remote sensing of the atmosphere and weather using different observational systems.Basudeb GhoshBasudeb Ghosh received Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Sciences and Master’s degree in Electronics from University of Calcutta in 1999 and 2001, respectively, and Ph.D. degree with specialization in Microwave engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee in 2009. Presently, he is working as Associate professor in Dept. of Avionics, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST). Before joining IIST, he worked in Chang Gung University, Taiwan as a post-doctoral research associate. His main area of research work includes computational electromagnetic techniques, passive microwave devices, Metasurface antennas and wireless power transfer.