Polarization-space-time joint domain processing for clutter suppression in subspace leakage environments

Subspace leakage is a problem frequently encountered in many real-world multidimensional array space time adaptive processing (STAP). It leads to effective rank of clutter increased and clutter spectral spread, which seriously impacts on the performance of clutter suppression of STAP. We consider that polarization information combined to spatial and Doppler information can improve the performance of clutter suppression in subspace leakage environments. New exploited polarization information can improve the performance of clutter rejection and can enhance output signal-to-clutter-plus-noise ratio (SCNR). The performance of polarization-space-time joint domain processing (PST-JDP) is significantly superior to STAP in channel mismatch and ICM case, especially Doppler frequency of the target is small. Polarization difference between target and clutter is larger and clutter degree of polarization is higher, the performance of clutter suppression for PST-JDP is better.