Abstract:

When a moving target flies at a very low attitude, referred to as supper-low-attitude target, it results in target detection performance loss or target tracking error. This is due to the secondary interaction between the moving and environment clutter, which causes an image of the moving target under the ground/sea. To deal with this problem, a robust space-time adaptive processing (STAP) method based on the optimized joint magnitude and phase constraints in the temporal domain is proposed. The Doppler spread characteristics caused by the supper-low-attitude target and its false image counterpart are analysed. With joint magnitude and phase constraints imposed on and around the target, the mainlobe is well maintained and the performance loss due to Doppler spread is avoided. Simulation examples demonstrate that the robustness and detection performance is significantly improved with the proposed method.