Clutter suppression approach for non‐sidelooking airborne radar with medium pulse repetition frequency. Issue 9 (1st December 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dai, Baoquan; Wang, Tong; Wu, Yifeng; Wu, Jianxin; Bao, Zheng
• Is Part Of: IET radar, sonar & navigation. Volume 8:Issue 9(2014)
• Page Start: 999
• Page End: 1007
• Publication Date: 2014-12-01
• Subjects: airborne radar -- Doppler radar -- radar clutter -- space‐time adaptive processing -- array signal processing -- radar signal processing; clutter suppression -- nonsidelooking airborne radar -- medium pulse repetition frequency -- space time adaptive processing -- near range clutter -- oblique projector -- adaptive beamformer -- azimuth Doppler STAP beamformer -- steering vector calibration -- clutter range dependence; Signal processing -- Periodicals; Radar -- Periodicals; Sonar -- Periodicals; Electronics in navigation -- Periodicals; Navigation -- Periodicals; 621.3848
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-rsn.2013.0229
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-8784

Abstract

Abstract : For non‐sidelooking airborne radar operating in medium pulse repetition frequency mode, the space–time adaptive processing (STAP) technique suffers from a significant performance loss due to the range dependence of clutter. Here, an efficient clutter suppression approach is presented to improve STAP performance. Utilising the characteristics of clutter, the near‐range clutter, the major reason for the performance degradation, is extracted from raw returns using a specially designed oblique projector firstly, and then is mitigated by an adaptive beamformer estimated from the extracted components. Subsequently, an azimuth‐Doppler STAP beamformer is employed to further suppress the residual clutter. To enhance the robustness of the approach, a simple steering vector calibration technique is taken into account. The proposed approach can eliminate the near‐range clutter effectively, and therefore alleviate the clutter range dependence greatly. The STAP performance can be improved significantly. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented method.