Angular Target Detection by Means of DPCA like Technique

Displacement Phase Center Antenna (DPCA) technique is largely adopted in clutter suppression from moving platforms. In this paper, using a DPCA-like technique, it has been evaluated the capability of discriminating the angular position of targets, by means of the induced Doppler obtained by platform motion emulation. Using a linear array and sequentially activating the antenna elements, it has been determined the targets positions from the echo signal collected at each antenna port. An experimental setup has been developed in order to validate the approach. We talk about DPCA-like and not DPCA as, strictly speaking, we are not changing the antenna phase center but only emulating an antenna movement, without adding other processing.