STAP for Airborne Radar Based on Dual-Frequency Space-Time Coprime Sampling Structure

Abstract

To overcome the space-time adaptive processing (STAP) performance loss caused by discarding the non-uniform parts of difference coarray and copulse for coprime sampling structure under the condition of single-frequency operation, this paper proposes a new STAP algorithm to improve the precision of filter weight vector estimation by the dual-frequency operation. By selecting a single proper additional operation frequency, we can obtain the different coarray and copulse, thus fill two missed virtual sensors and pulses of the difference structures in the single-frequency operation simultaneously. Compared with the single-frequency operation, the dual-frequency operation method can acquire the bigger uniform linear array (ULA) and coherent processing interval (CPI) pulse train to improve the system degrees of freedom (DOF), and result in higher angle-Doppler resolution. In addition, the coprime array has the little mutual coupling effect because of the larger inter-sensors spacing. Therefore, the resulting method can alleviate mutual coupling and enhance the system DOF.

Keywords

• Coprime sampling structure
• degrees of freedom
• dual-frequency operation
• space-time adaptive processing
• mutual coupling