An extended formulation of the Maximum Likelihood Estimation algorithm. Application to space-time adaptive processing

This paper proposes an extended version of the Maximum Likelihood Estimation Detector (MLED) that can operate in severe heterogeneous environment for slow moving target detection in ground clutter using space-time adaptive processing (STAP). Unlike the MLED, the extended version called STOP-BAND APES does not suffer from the high Doppler resolution properties of the MLED leading to severe extra computational burden. Performances are illustrated on realistic synthetic data.