Ground Clutter Suppression Based on Lifting Wavelet Transform for Airship-borne Weather Radar

Ground clutter is one of the significant challenges faced by airship-borne weather radar in observing weak meteorological targets. Traditional ground clutter suppression methods will inevitably cause the loss of useful weather signals. In this paper, an adaptive threshold ground clutter suppression method based on lifting wavelet transform is proposed. In the wavelet domain, weather signals are often found in other high-frequency layers, whereas ground clutter signals are dispersed in the low-frequency layer by wavelet decomposition. By compressing the large value coefficients identified as clutter components with an adaptive threshold, ground clutter signals in radar echoes can be effectively removed while preserving weather signals to the maximum extent. The proposed method is validated through simulations, ground observation results with airship-borne weather radar and real data from the C-band weather radar.