Design of Optimized Codes for Radar Space-Time Adaptive Processing

In this paper, we deal with the problem of constrained code optimization for radar Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) in the presence of colored Gaussian disturbance. At the design stage, we devise a code design algorithm complying with the following optimality criterion: maximization of the detection performance under a control on the regions of achievable values for the temporal and spatial Doppler estimation accuracy, and on the degree of similarity with a pre-fixed radar code. The resulting quadratic optimization problem is solved resorting to a convex relaxation that belongs to the Semidefinite Program (SDP) class. An optimal solution of the initial problem is then constructed through a suitable rank-one decomposition of an optimal solution of the relaxed one. At the analysis stage, we assess the performance of the new algorithm both on simulated data and on the standard challenging KnowledgeAided Sensor Signal Processing and Expert Reasoning (KASSPER) datacube. Index Terms Radar Signal Processing, Non-Convex Quadratic Optimization, Semidefinite Programming Relaxation, STAP. A. De Maio (Corresponding Author) and S. De Nicola are with Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettronica e delle Telecomunicazioni, Via Claudio 21, I-80125 Napoli, Italy. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]. Y. Huang and D. P. Palomar are with Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]. S. Zhang is with Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. E-mail: [email protected]. A. Farina is with SELEX Sistemi Integrati, via Tiburtina Km.12.4, I-00131 Roma, Italy. E-mail: [email protected]. November 5, 2008 DRAFT 2