Sparsity-based space-time adaptive processing using complex-valued homotopy technique

Sparsity-based STAP algorithms exploit the sparsity that the clutter spectrum only occupies a small number of spatio-temporal bins in the whole spatio-temporal plane, and provide an effective approach to suppress the clutter especially in very short snapshots. However, existing sparsity-based STAP algorithms either require high computational complexity, or have complex parameter settings, which results in not easy realization in practice. In this paper, a novel STAP algorithm based on the complex-valued homotopy technique is proposed providing a simple parameter setting and computationally efficient approach for airborne radar applications. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithms converge at a very fast speed and provide an excellent detection performance in very short snapshots.