A New Approach to Moving Target Detection using Unit Circle Roots Constrained Adaptive Matched Filter

In this paper, we derive a novel variation of the adaptive matched filter (AMF) which enforces the unit circle roots property by exploiting polynomial conjugate-symmetry. Motivated by the theoretical necessity of this property for the minimum-variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamformer and based on the proportionality of the AMF and MVDR solutions, we apply our approach to the problem of radar moving target detection from a stationary platform. The proposed unit-circle roots constrained AMF (UCRC-AMF) shows improved detection performance with limited secondary data compared to the conventional AMF. The improved performance of the UCRC-AMF is demonstrated using simulation examples and compared to the conventional AMF as well as the known-covariance case.