PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF POLARIZATION-SPACE-TIME THREE-DOMAIN JOINT PROCESSING FOR CLUTTER SUPPRESSION IN AIRBORNE RADAR

An optimum polarization-space-time joint domain processing (PST-JDP) technique is proposed for clutter suppression which adequately adopts the three-domain information including the polarization, space and Doppler frequency information of the radar echo. The study shows that the polarization information together with the space and Doppler frequency information are effective to significantly enhance the clutter suppression performance for airborne radar. Several new techniques, (i.e., the covariance matrix eigendecomposition, the spectral analysis and the resolution grid method), are utilized for deriving the performance of the optimum PST-JDP. The main factors which affect on the performance of clutter rejection are the clutter degree of polarization, statistical distance of polarization between target and clutter, Doppler frequency of target and input clutter-to-noise ratio. The new optimum PST-JDP method outperforms significantly the traditional optimum space-time processing technology, especially in the case of the slowly or tangentially moving target. The simulation verifies the correctness and efficiency of the model.