Fast space-time adaptive processing method by using the sparse representation

One of the key problems of space-time adaptive processing (STAP) is how to estimate the clutter covariance matrix (CCM) accurately with a small number of samples when the clutter environment is heterogeneous. The CCM estimation methods based on sparse representation (CCM-SR) can achieve a good estimation performance with only one or a few samples, which significantly improves the convergence rate of the STAP. By using the sparsity characteristic of the clutter spectrum, the CCM-SR method estimates the clutter spectrum and yields a good estimation of the CCM. However, there are often many pseudo-peaks in the clutter spectrum estimated by the sparse representation (SR), which will cause a CCM estimation error. By exploiting the special relationship of the clutter ridge curve between space domain and Doppler domain, we can eliminate the pseudo-peaks in the clutter spectrum effectively via fitting the curve of the clutter ridge and improve the estimation accuracy of the CCM. In addition, a byproduct of our method is the estimation of the flying parameters (the velocity of the radar platform, the crab angle and so on). Experimental results show that the proposed method can improve the performance of conventional STAP based on sparse representation (STAP-SR) and obtain a good estimation of the flight parameters.