Pre-filtering for clutter rejection in beamspace STAP

Several space-time adaptive processing algorithms have been proposed to detect weak targets in the presence of strong interference, especially clutter and jamming. Except for displaced phase center array (DPCA) processing, radar signal processing algorithms ignore the fact that the location of the clutter ridge in angle-Doppler space is known, given the platform speed and direction. This paper introduces our attempt to exploit this a priori knowledge in conjunction with the joint domain localized processing algorithm. Using a two-dimensional filter, clutter is rejected in a first, non-adaptive stage, followed by adaptive processing in the angle-Doppler domain.