MVDR vectorial lattice applied to space-time processing for AEW radar with large instantaneous bandwidth

The problem of space-time processing is described for a generic airborne early warning radar with large instantaneous bandwidth. The mathematical models of target, clutter, directional EM interference, and receiver noise are introduced together with the scheme of the optimum detection processor. The performance of the processor is determined for a number of operational situations as a function of the radar and processor parameters; performance curves provide guidelines for the selection of the radar parameters. When the interference covariance matrix is not known a priori, the MVDR (minimum variance distortionless response) algorithm is applied to determine a numerically robust and efficient adaptive processor. This leads to a so-called vectorial lattice computational flow graph which can be mapped on to a fine grain parallel systolic computing architecture. The performance of the adaptive vectorial lattice scheme is compared to that of the optimum scheme to evaluate the adaptivity loss. A perspective to further theoretical and practical investigations concludes the paper