Bistatic MIMO Sonar Space-Time Adaptive Processing Based on Knowledge-aided Transform

In this paper, we derive the space-time adaptive processing (STAP) signal mode of the bistatic Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) sonar system in reverberation background and present a new knowledge-aided (KA) STAP method based on a transform that jointly exploit the spectral property of the target-free guard cells and the persymmetric structure of the reference covariance matrix to reformulate target-free reference data. While using only a quarter of the reference guard cells as the sample matrix inversion (SMI) method, the presented KA method has nearly the same signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) loss and spatial beampattern performances as the SMI. The mean SINR loss value of the KA method is about 12 dB better than that of the loaded sample matrix inversion (LSMI) method at the same reverberation background.