Complementary direct data domain STAP for multichannel airborne passive radar

In recent years, passive radar has been investigated for airborne applications in imaging and detection of ground targets. There are challenges with detection of land targets from an airborne platform due to platform motion which causes the clutter Doppler to spread and the presence of discrete scatterers which can be strong and confused with targets of interest. In this paper, the problem of heterogeneity in the ground clutter is addressed through a complementary direct data domain algorithm that exploits knowledge of the ground clutter. Once an estimate of the ground clutter is found, it can be subtracted from the original range Doppler map to reveal potential targets. The performance of this novel multichannel algorithm is assessed using a Monte Carlo simulation with simulated data.