Direct data domain stap algorithm for airborne radar applications

STAP has been widely studied for airborne radar as an approach to adaptively detect small target competing with ground clutter. Non-homogeneous interference is currently an important aspect of STAP. The discrete non-homogenates due to strong interference or target separating from clutter ridge account for much of the degradation in urban and spiky clutter scenarios. The use of adaptive weights with the hybrid algorithm is widely application to discrete non-homogeneity problems, which is a hybridization of a two-dimensional non-statistical method with statistically based methods. This paper further considers a new direct data domain processor with a prefilter attenuating clutter to strengthen suppression for discrete non-homogeneous interference. By that, the desirable performance of STAP to discrete non-homogeneous interference is observed.