Sample Selection for Covariance Estimation in Practical Airborne Environments.

Abstract : In this technical memorandum, a significant observation on a fundamental limitation to space-time adaptive processing in practical airborne environments is briefly discussed. This observation is a result of extensive analysis of measured airborne data from the Multichannel Airborne Radar Measurements (MCARMS) program. In particular, the problem of nonhomogeneous data and its impact on the estimation of the interference covariance matrix, a critical operation in space-time adaptive processing, is considered.