Registration-based range-dependence compensation method for conformal array STAP

Abstract

We first generalize the concept of clutter power spectrum locus so that it can be applied to arbitrary antenna arrays. This locus is a curve in the 4D space of the Doppler frequency and the 3 spatial frequencies. This generalization is valid for both monostatic and bistatic radar configurations. We show that the customary clutter power spectrum locus representation in the 2D space of the Doppler frequency and the single spatial frequency used when considering linear arrays is a projection of the 4D curve. This projection property furthermore provides a very simple interpretation of the evolution of the 2D clutter power spectrum locus in function of the crab angle (angle between the antenna reference direction and the platform velocity vector). We then extend the registration-based clutter rangedependence compensation method developed in [1, 2] to arbitrary antenna arrays. Finally, we evaluate the performance in terms of SINR loss and show that this method can achieve near-optimum detection performance.