Range-dependence compensation in airborne bistatic STAP radar for partially-calibrated conformal antenna arrays

We consider space-time adaptive processing (STAP) when the radar returns are recorded by a conformal antenna array (CAA). The statistics of the secondary data snapshots used to estimate the optimum weight vector are not identically distributed with respect to range, thus preventing the customary STAP processor from achieving its optimum performance. The compensation of the range dependence of the secondary data requires precise knowledge of the array response for any direction of arrival (DOA), and, thus, the spatial steering vector (SV). We propose a novel registration-based range-dependence compensation algorithm that gives an accurate estimate of the interference-plus-noise covariance matrix under the hypotheses that calibrated spatial SVs are available only for a small set of DOAs, and that the errors in the model available for the array response are DOA dependent. The performance in terms of signal-to-inference-plus-noise ratio loss is promizing.

[1]  James H. McClellan,et al.  Clutter-limited detection performance of multi-channel conformal arrays , 2004, Signal Process..

[2]  Jeffrey L. Krolik,et al.  Space-time interpolation for adaptive arrays with limited training data , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2003. Proceedings. (ICASSP '03)..

[3]  Ryan K. Hersey.  Adaptive Detection and Estimation Using a Conformal Array Antenna , 2004 .

[4]  L.E. Brennan,et al.  Theory of Adaptive Radar , 1973, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems.

[5]  F.D. Lapierre,et al.  RANSAC-based Flight Parameter Estimation for Registration-based Range-dependence Compensation in Airborne Bistatic STAP Radar with Conformal Antenna Arrays , 2006, 2006 European Radar Conference.

[6]  M.C. Wicks,et al.  Adaptive clutter cancellation in bistatic radar , 2000, Conference Record of the Thirty-Fourth Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers (Cat. No.00CH37154).

[7]  Rick S. Blum,et al.  Analysis of STAP algorithms for cases with mismatched steering and clutter statistics , 2000, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[8]  W.L. Melvin,et al.  A STAP overview , 2004, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine.

[9]  R. Klemm.  Principles of Space-Time Adaptive Processing , 2002 .

[10]  William L. Melvin,et al.  Doubly adaptive bistatic clutter filtering , 2003, Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE Radar Conference (Cat. No. 03CH37474).

[11]  F.D. Lapierre,et al.  Computationally-efficient range-dependence compensation method for bistatic radar STAP , 2005, IEEE International Radar Conference, 2005..

[12]  B. Himed,et al.  Adaptive compensation for conformal array STAP by configuration parameter estimation , 2006, 2006 IEEE Conference on Radar.

[13]  G. K. Borsari,et al.  Mitigating effects on STAP processing caused by an inclined array , 1998, Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE Radar Conference, RADARCON'98. Challenges in Radar Systems and Solutions (Cat. No.98CH36197).

[14]  Marius Pesavento,et al.  Virtual array design for array interpolation using differential geometry , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[15]  F.D. Lapierre,et al.  Knowledge-aided array calibration for registration-based range-dependence compensation in airborne STAP radar with Conformal Antenna Arrays , 2007, 2007 European Radar Conference.

[16]  B. Himed,et al.  Estimation of range-dependent clutter covariance by configuration system parameter estimation , 2005, IEEE International Radar Conference, 2005..

[17]  J. Verly,et al.  Registration-based range-dependence compensation method for conformal array STAP , 2005 .