The impact of internal clutter motion on a sample matrix inversion space-time adaptive processing algorithm and the GMTI minimum detectable velocity

A MATLAB simulation was constructed to better study the effects of internal clutter motion on a notional X band monostatic airborne radar employing a ground moving target indicator (GMTI) algorithm to detect slow velocity targets of low radar cross section. A sample matrix inversion (SMI) fully adapted post-Doppler space-time processor (tapered and untapered) was utilized and the internal clutter motion model of Ward [1] was applied to the overall simulation. As one would expect, the untapered version yielded slightly better results but in all cases final minimum detectable velocities of about 1.0 meter/second were obtained. By judicious choice and implementation of a reduced rank/dimension algorithm, it should be possible to obtain similar MDV results.