Space-Time Adaptive Processing for Radar

Abstract Space-time adaptive processing (STAP) is an important radar technology. It is a cornerstone in the design of modern moving target indication and imaging radar systems. Specifically, STAP is a multidimensional filtering technique that mitigates the influence of clutter or radio frequency interference on principal radar products, viz. radar detections or images. This work serves as a tutorial reference of fundamental STAP concepts and techniques. The interested reader will encounter the basic STAP formulation, common STAP performance metrics, signal models, interference mitigation approaches, an application example corresponding to Doppler spread clutter mitigation in airborne radar systems, current challenges, and some implementation issues. The fundamentals presented herein are extensible to a range of radar signal processing problems.

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