STAP for clutter suppression with sum and difference beams

A unique approach for airborne radar clutter rejection is developed and evaluated. This spatial and temporal adaptive approach employs the sum and difference beams of an antenna, which has significant practical advantages because it can be implemented with no/little change to the front-end electronics of airborne systems where sum and difference beams already exist for other reasons. The low sidelobe implementation of many sum and difference beam systems and the low gain of the difference beam in the direction of the target gives this approach the potential in many radars for a more predictable response pattern. The impact of these factors is shown in an airborne clutter rejection demonstration where the performance of this approach is compared with that of the factored approach (FA) using additional spatial channels and that of conventional pulse-Doppler (PD) processing. Reliable detection of an injected target is only achieved by this approach.