An adaptive innovations-based detection algorithm (IBDA) for moving target detector (MTD) radars is derived. The algorithm behaves well with respect to numerical properties and computational complexity. It possesses high computing parallelism and data locality, making VLSI array realization feasible. A systolic array is designed with an iteration time of (2n+1) and ((n/sup 2/+3n)/2) processing elements, where n is the length of the adaptive filter.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>