Compensation of clutter spectrum for airborne forward-looking radar based on the clutter subspace transformation

Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) is a powerful two-dimensional filtering algorithm for clutter suppression. However, most previous studies of STAP theory have focused on side-looking array radar (SLAR). This paper addresses the issue of forward-looking radar from a STAP. The clutter distribution of airborne forward-looking radar is analyzed and investigated, and a new clutter suppression approach to airborne radar with forward-looking array based on clutter subspace is proposed. This method is referred to as clutter subspace transformation (CST) matrices, use clutter subspace transformation matrices are shown to eliminate ground clutter heterogeneous and generate a sufficient data to construct the new covariance matrix. Finally, the conventional STAP could be applied to the clutter suppression. Simulation results show a good improvement in processor performance.