Non-linear STAP processing [airborne early warning radar]

The paper deals with the cancellation of clutter echoes in modern airborne early warning (AEW) radar systems equipped with digital beam-forming. We compare the performance of the reduced degrees of freedom (d.o.f.) GLRT (generalised likelihood ratio test) detectors to the recently conceived non-linear detector. This is demonstrated to be a compromise solution between computational requirement and detection performance. Moreover, it shows much higher robustness to non-homogeneous clutter. A MATLAB based software tool is used to show the results achieved against the live data recorded by the experimental radar AAFTE (Adaptive Array Flight Test Equipment) of NRL (USA)