STAP for clutter suppression with sum and difference beams

A unique approach for airborne radar clutter rejection is developed and eva luated. This spatial and temporal adaptive approach employs the sum and dif ference beams of an antenna, which has significant practical advantages bec ause it can be implemented with no/little change to the front-end electroni cs of airborne systems where sum and difference beams already exist for oth er reasons. The low sidelobe implementation of many sum and difference beam systems and the low gain of the difference beam in the direction of the ta rget gives this approach the potential in many radars for a more predictabl e response pattern. The impact of these factors is shown in an airborne clu tter rejection demonstration where the performance of this approach is comp ared with that of the factored approach (FA) using additional spatial chann els and that of conventional pulse-Doppler (PD) processing Reliable detecti on of an injected target is only achieved by this approach.