Eigencanceller STAP algorithm by utilizing prolate spheroidal wave functions for airborne radar

Abstract

The conventional eigencanceller-based (EC) space-time adaptive processing (STAP) method can suppress clutter down to zero which is suitable for nonhomogeneous clutter environments. Nevertheless, the EC STAP method has a higher computational complexity due to the eigen-decomposition. Therefore, an improved EC STAP method by utilizing the prolate spheroidal wave functions (PSWF) is proposed to reduce the computational complexity, where the ideal clutter subspace can be rapidly constructed by nonuniformly sampling the PSWF. Moreover, the proposed EC-P SWF STAP method is modified based on the covariance matrix taper (CMT) to deal with the subspace leakage phenomenon which is common in the actual clutter environment. The clutter suppression performance of the proposed method is evaluated by using the numerically simulated data.