An adaptive multiband clutter polarization canceler

Polarization diversity can be used in the adaptive polarimetric radar system to improve detection performance for slowly or tangentially moving targets, which typically go undetected when only Doppler processing is used. Previous work in this area has shown that with the adaptive single band polarization canceler (ASBPC) the target signal cancellation is a serious problem. The authors propose an adaptive multiband polarization canceler (AMBPC) as a solution. The key idea is based on the variability of clutter polarization, relative to that of the target, as a function of radar frequency. The AMBPC-based detector is shown to significantly outperform the corresponding ASBPC under the toughest system constraint. The total gain of the AMBPC over the ASBPC is attributed to the combination of the signal cancellation reduction, better adaptation, and a fluctuation reduction of the degree of target polarization, in addition to the well-known target amplitude fluctuation reduction.<>