Registration-Based Range-Dependence Compensation for Bistatic STAP Radars

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.