Impact of STAP processing on antenna design

Up to now antennas are generally composed of a planar array whose mechanical structure stiffness gives to the radiating elements the needed relative position accuracy to insure a high quality pattern (high gain/ low sidelobes). Operational need evolution and technological breakthroughs will lead to no longer consider antennas as a single well defined unit, but as arrays of antennas whose natural radiating pattern cannot be controlled by construction but needs compensation by processing to reject the spurious signals (jammers, ground echoes..). The Space-Time processing which mixes the angular processing and the range/Doppler processing can adapt the antenna pattern for each Range/Doppler cell and overcome the sidelobe issues.