Space-time clutter model for airborne bistatic radar with non-Gaussian statistics

In this paper, a space-time clutter model with non-Gaussian statistics for varying airborne bistatic radar scenarios is presented, which can be widely employed to assess the performance of bistatic space-time adaptive processing (STAP) algorithms in realistic clutter environments of interest. To extract the fundamental properties of bistatic clutter, i.e. the range dependency of bistatic clutter spectrum and the clutter power variation in range-angle cells, a new approach of coordinate system conversion is initiated into formulating bistatic geometrical model by us, and the bistatic non-Gaussian amplitude clutter representation method based on compound model is introduced. The bistatic configuration parameters of multi-channel airborne radar measurement (MCARM) experiment and the experimental non-Gaussian clutter data are used to validate the provided models, and the results manifest that the proposed bistatic clutter model is reliable and apt to accurately shape the space-time clutter spectrum tied up with specific airborne bistatic radar scenario and characterize the heterogeneity of clutter amplitude distribution in practical clutter environments.