Robust space‐time adaptive processing for airborne radar with coprime arrays in presence of gain and phase errors

Abstract Space‐time adaptive processing (STAP) for sparse arrays such as coprime and nested arrays is shown to have improved performance for clutter suppression in airborne radar as compared with uniform linear arrays with the same size. However, most of the existing STAP algorithms are derived base...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Xiaoye Wang, Zhaocheng Yang, Jianjun Huang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2021-01-01
Series:IET Radar, Sonar & Navigation
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1049/rsn2.12015
Description
Summary:Abstract Space‐time adaptive processing (STAP) for sparse arrays such as coprime and nested arrays is shown to have improved performance for clutter suppression in airborne radar as compared with uniform linear arrays with the same size. However, most of the existing STAP algorithms are derived based on the assumption that the array manifold is exactly known. In this study, a robust STAP algorithm for the clutter suppression with coprime arrays in the presence of gain and phase (GP) errors is proposed. In particular, the virtual space‐time signal with GP errors is first formulated using the covariance matrix of the perturbed array received data under the Gaussian distributed interference assumption. Then, the problem of the clutter spectrum and GP errors' estimates is formulated as a joint minimization optimization problem by exploiting the sparsity of the clutter in the angle–Doppler plane. Finally, a two‐step approach based on the sparse recovery and least‐squared method is developed to solve the resultant optimization problem and the STAP filter can be designed using the clutter spectrum and GP errors' estimates. Compared with the existing sparsity‐based STAP algorithms for coprime arrays, the proposed algorithm shows more robustness to GP errors as illustrated by simulation results.
ISSN:1751-8784
1751-8792