Elevation interferometric STAP using a thinned planar array

Abstract

The research applies space-time adaptive processing (STAP) techniques to a pseudo-circular array generated by selectively thinning a rectangular array. A hybrid approach incorporating elevation interferometry and STAP techniques is used. Results show the thinned 16-element pseudo-circular array offers significant detection performance improvement over the baseline factored time-space (FTS) technique operating on a linear array, e.g., an 8-element horizontal linear array. Results are demonstrated for cases with and without range ambiguous clutter. This performance level is achieved using a factor of M less sample support than required for full adaptivity where M represents the number of pulses within a coherent processing interval.