Clutter mitigation techniques for space-based radar

The mission of a ground moving target indication (GMTI) radar, as its name implies, is to detect and classify ground-based vehicles, even ones with very low velocities. This type of radar can provide a wide area of coverage and frequent updates of a specific area of interest if the radar is placed on a satellite with a low earth orbit. However, because of the large footprint of the radar on the ground and the high satellite velocity, target signals must compete with very strong, nearby clutter. This paper describes how space-time adaptive processing (STAP) can be used for the purposes of clutter rejection in order to perform the GMTI function. In addition, we confront several important issues for a space-based radar such as pulse repetition frequency (PRF) selection, the choice of a STAP algorithm, and the number of spatial channels. These results are quantified in terms of clutter cancellation and angle accuracy.