Adaptive Clutter Suppression in Step Scan Radars

Clutter echoes with unknown power spectra (from weather, sea, chaff disturbances) can be suppressed only adaptively. The use of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) for clutter suppression in step scan radars is investigated by use of a clutter model that is derived in analogy to measured clutter data of a radar with a rotating antenna.     

Suboptimal Simulation and Suppression of Clutter Signals

Two digital filters are presented, which are suited for generating (Correlation) or suppressing (decorrelation) by approximation time-discrete signals with preset autocorrelation function from white noise. The advantage of these suboptimal filters is that the determination of their coefficients is very simple. For this reason the filters are weil suited for generating or suppresing signals with rapidly varying statistical parameters. One application possibility is the simulation and the adaptive suppression of clutter signals in surveillance radar systems.     

Low-Error Bearing Estimation in Shallow Water

The multipath effect due to sound propagation in shallow water causes bearing errors in horizontal line arrays for all angles different from broadside when conventional resolution methods like beamformer or maximum entropy method are used. Error-free bearing estimates can be achieved only by means of generalized power estimators which use a priori knowledge about the spatial channel statistics. This a priori knowledge is usually unknown. The method described makes use of a pilot source which transmits training signals in order to achieve an estimate for a suboptimum spatial signal covariance matrix which is used for field matching.     

Comparison between monostatic and bistatic antenna configurationsfor STAP

The unique characteristics of bistatic radar operation on the performance of airborne/spaceborne moving target indicator (MTI) radars that use space-time adaptive processing (STAP) are discussed. It has been shown that monostatic STAP radar has the following properties. 1) For a horizontal flight path and a planar Earth the curves of constant clutter Doppler (isodops) are hyperbolas. 2) For a sidelooking antenna geometry the clutter Doppler is range independent. 3) Clutter trajectories in the cosφ-F plane (F=normalized Doppler) are in general ellipses (or straight lines for a sidelooking array). We demonstrate that these well-known properties are distorted by the displacement between transmitter and receiver in a bistatic configuration. It is shown that even for the sidelooking array geometry the clutter Doppler is range-dependent which requires adaptation of the STAP processor for each individual range gate. Conclusions for the design of STAP processors are drawn