Adaptive antenna space-time processing techniques to suppress platform scattered clutter for airborne radar

Advanced airborne radar may require adaptive space-time processing (STP) to detect small targets at long ranges. STP is a multidimensional adaptive filter that resolves received radar data into a spectrum of plane waves in angular and Doppler frequency coordinates. The platform of an airborne radar can scatter incident signals into the antenna, spreading the spectra of the clutter signals so that it overlaps the target signal and therefore increases the false alarm rate. To reduce the processing requirements of a full STP filter, a suboptimal architecture with fewer degrees of freedom is demonstrated and compared with the optimal architecture.<>