Knowledge-Aided Covariance Matrix Estimation via Kronecker Product Expansions for Airborne STAP
This letter proposes a new approach for knowledge-aided estimation of structured clutter covariance matrices (CCMs) in airborne radar systems with limited training data. First, we model the CCM in space–time adaptive processing (STAP) as a sum of low-rank Kronecker products. We then apply a permutation operation to convert the Kronecker factors into linear structures and propose a novel CCM estimation method under the maximum-likelihood framework. Employing a proximal gradient algorithm, the proposed method simultaneously exploits the knowledge about the clutter and the Kronecker structure of the CCM. We finally evaluate the performance of the proposed method using real data from airborne STAP.
A robust colored-loading factor optimization approach for knowledge-aided STAP
A robust colored-loading factor optimization approach referred to as LWEC is newly proposed for colored-loading knowledge-aided STAP. The colored-loading factor is optimized to maximize the whitening ability of the colored-loaded clutter-and-noise covariance matrix (CNCM) of the cell under test (CUT) on selected secondary samples. The proposed approach is robust to accuracy degree heterogeneity of the a priori information in both the range domain and doppler domain for its ability to evaluate the performance of the colored-loaded CNCM of each range bin independently and conduct the optimization algorithm after the dimension-reduced process. Solution of the optimization function is proved to be unique. Numerical experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach.
OFDM Radar Space-Time Adaptive Processing by Exploiting Spatio-Temporal Sparsity
We propose a sparsity-based space-time adaptive processing (STAP) algorithm to detect a slowly-moving target using an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radar. We observe that the target and interference spectra are inherently sparse in the spatio-temporal domain. Hence, we exploit that sparsity to develop an efficient STAP technique that utilizes considerably lesser number of secondary data and produces an equivalent performance as the other existing STAP techniques. In addition, the use of an OFDM signal increases the frequency diversity of our system, as different scattering centers of a target resonate at different frequencies, and thus improves the target detectability. First, we formulate a realistic sparse-measurement model for an OFDM radar considering both the clutter and jammer as the interfering sources. Then, we apply a residual sparse-recovery technique based on the LASSO estimator to estimate the target and interference covariance matrices, and subsequently compute the optimal STAP-filter weights. Our numerical results demonstrate a comparative performance analysis of the proposed sparse-STAP algorithm with four other existing STAP methods. Furthermore, we discover that the OFDM-STAP filter-weights are adaptable to the frequency-variabilities of the target and interference responses, in addition to the spatio-temporal variabilities. Hence, by better utilizing the frequency variabilities, we propose an adaptive OFDM-waveform design technique, and consequently gain a significant amount of STAP-performance improvement.