Stochastic constraints in nonstationary hot clutter cancellation

This paper considers the use of spatio-temporal adaptive processing (STAP) in OTHR and SAR applications to remove nonstationary multipath interference, known as "hot clutter". Since the spatio-temporal properties of hot clutter cannot be assumed constant over the coherent processing interval, conventional adaptive routines fail to provide effective hot clutter mitigation without degrading sub-clutter visibility for backscattered radar signals. The approach presented incorporates multiple stochastic constraints, previously investigated for spatial-only adaptive processing, to achieve effective elimination of hot clutter with distortionless coherent processing for backscattered radar signals.