Benefits of space-time adaptive processing (STAP) in bistatic airborne radar

The paper investigates the merits of using STAP for clutter suppression in bistatic airborne radar. Particular emphasis is placed on the clutter angle-Doppler inter-relationships in bistatic geometries, and it is demonstrated that there can be ground regions where small changes in arrival angle imply large changes in the Doppler shift. STAP clutter rejection methods are not ideally suited to these cases. It is also shown that the angle-Doppler inter-relationships vary with the ground topography, but the effects of this are usually small. Finally, it is shown that the clutter-suppression performance is dependent on the transmit and receive beam mainlobe/sidelobe interactions.