Beam-augmented space-time adaptive processing

Combined monostatic clutter (MSC) and terrain scattered interference (TSI) pose a difficult challenge for adaptive radar processing. Mitigation techniques exist for each interference alone but are insufficient for their combined effects. Current approaches separate the problem into two stages where TSI is suppressed first and then MSC. The problem with this cascade approach is that during the initial TSI suppression stage, the MSC becomes corrupted. In this paper an innovative technique is introduced for achieving a significant improvement in cancellation performance for both MSC and TSI, even when the jammer appears in the mainbeam. The majority of the interference rejection, both TSI and MSC, is accomplished with an MSC filter, with further TSI suppression accomplished via an additional tapped reference beam. Simultaneous optimization of the MSC filter weights and reference beam weights yields the desired processor. Performance results using Mountain-top data demonstrate the superiority of the proposed processor over existing processors