Real-time adaptive airborne MTI. I. Space-time processing

Space-time adaptive processing (STAP) has shown to be an efficient tool for detection of slow targets (moving target imaging, MTI) in a strong clutter environment by air- or spaceborne radar. STAP algorithms have the attractive property of implicitly compensating for the clutter Doppler spread induced by the radar platform motion. STAP techniques have been discussed for application with sidelooking (SL) and forward looking (FL) radar configurations. It is desirable to suppress clutter returns on board the radar platform in real-time. In this paper a tutorial overview of a variety of space-time processing architectures for real-time processing is presented.