Post-adaptive processing time-delay beamforming for clutter suppression in airborne radar

A novel beamforming architecture is presented in which time delay steering is applied after the application of space-time adaptive processing (STAP) in a phased array for airborne radar. Improved clutter suppression and slow moving target detection performance can be achieved over that associated with STAP and conventional time delay steering in wideband sideways looking applications. The architecture also provides a computationally efficient means of applying time-delay beamforming in conjunction with STAP in applications where multiple receive beams are required.