Algorithms for mitigating terrain-scattered interference

Abstract

This paper summarises a study of terrain-scattered interference (TSI) mitigation techniques, focusing on joint TSI mitigation and monostatic clutter nulling for airborne radars. It begins with an overview of TSI phenomenology and two-dimensional space-time adaptive processing (STAP) techniques for cancelling TSI. Two approaches for mitigating combined TSI and clutter are then examined. In the first approach, a sequence of two-dimensional adaptive filters is used. The first of these filters cancels TSI, while the second filter cancels monostatic clutter. In the second approach, a single, three-dimensional pre-Doppler STAP algorithm is used to cancel clutter and TSI simultaneously. Performance results for a representative system are shown to illustrate the trade-offs inherent in designing a mitigation approach.