Space-Time Adaptive Cancellation in Passive Radar Systems

Abstract

A critical issue in the realization of passive radar systems is the effective suppression of the zero Doppler interference (ZDI). The performance of the clutter cancellation relies much on the used algorithms. Several state-of-the-art approaches consist in the independent use of spatial and temporal algorithms for ZDI suppression. In this paper, a novel interference cancellation algorithm is proposed, which jointly exploits the available information from both space and time domains. We call this novel method Space-Time Adaptive Cancellation (STAC), and it differs from previous schemes included among the tools of Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP). The STAC algorithm is able to cancel out the high power direct and multipath signals on all the surveillance antenna channels prior to the beamforming and other space domain processing methods. The proposed preprocessing technique facilitates the detection of targets even in the direction of the illuminator or large static scatterers. Moreover, the interference rejection capability is also enhanced in the space domain. The performance of the presented algorithm is verified through simulations and field measurements. The experiments show improvement over the currently available filtering techniques.