EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing 
Volume 2005 (2005), Issue 1, Pages 85-98
doi:10.1155/ASP.2005.85

Registration-Based Range-Dependence Compensation for Bistatic STAP Radars

Fabian D. Lapierre and Jacques G. Verly

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Liege, Building B28, Sart Tilman, Liege 4000, Belgium

Received 30 December 2003; Revised 18 June 2004

Abstract

We address the problem of detecting slow-moving targets using space-time adaptive processing (STAP) radar. Determining the optimum weights at each range requires data snapshots at neighboring ranges. However, in virtually all configurations, snapshot statistics are range dependent, meaning that snapshots are nonstationary with respect to range. This results in poor performance. In this paper, we propose a new compensation method based on registration of clutter ridges and designed to work on a single realization of the stochastic snapshot at each range. The method has been successfully tested on simulated, stochastic snapshots. An evaluation of performance is presented.