Post pulse compression and partially adaptive multi‐waveform STAP

The recently developed multi‐waveform space‐time adaptive processing (µ‐STAP) formulation incorporates additional training data into the sample covariance matrix estimate by applying multiple different secondary pulse compression filters to the raw received data, where these filters have a relatively low cross‐correlation with the transmitted waveform. The inclusion of this additional training data has been shown to improve robustness to non‐homogeneous clutter due to a ‘range smearing’ homogenising effect of the secondary filters. Here, the authors introduce post µ‐STAP (Pµ‐STAP), a new form of µ‐STAP that similarly generates additional training data, albeit after pulse compression has already occurred. In addition, we combine Pµ‐STAP with well‐known partially adaptive STAP techniques to assess whether the enhanced performance is retained for reduced‐dimension operation. Specifically, element‐space post‐Doppler, beam‐space pre‐Doppler, and beam‐space post‐Doppler implementations of Pµ‐STAP are evaluated via signal‐to‐interference‐plus‐noise ratio analysis and minimum detectable Doppler for different simulated clutter environments.