Robust Adaptive Null Widening for Conformal Array

To achieve effective interference suppression, the receiving array executes adaptive spatial filtering according to interference directions. However, due to the time-varying propagation path and the relative motion between the interference sources and the receiving array, the directions of interferences impinging on the receiving array will deviate, which will result in nonstationary interferences, thus the filtering effect is not satisfactory. The current research algorithms mainly focus on the uniform linear array, uniform plane array, and so on. There are few null widening studies on conformal arrays. To address this problem, we innovatively propose a null widening algorithm based on the covariance matrix taper (CMT) for the cylindrical conformal array that has been widely used in airborne radar. We first consider two different distribution interferences, and the possible interference is then added to the training sample by multiplying the covariance matrix with the taper matrix. Simulation results verify the significant robustness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm under two different distribution interference cases.