Proposed to be further developed are design measures, some proprietary, which have the potential of solving outstanding problems involved in realizing a feasible, robust, and cost-effective VHF/UHF Foliage Penetration STAP MTI radar. The subject design measures are folded-into a space-time adaptive processor designed to perform the following functions in a common multiple interference source environment and ground clutter: the detection/CFAR function, a batch processing side lobe target discrimination function, a post-target detection maximum likelihood angle estimator function, a target feature extraction function, and separate design measures for mitigating STAP degradation affects due to the deviation of the antenna array from a planar array geometry, and antenna dispersion affects. Performance evaluations will be made with a broadband 3-D STAP radar evaluation model - now in place. A number of categories of broadband antenna arrays will be considered in the foliage penetration STAP radar design study including conformal arrays (and a proprietary approach for making a STAP work efficiently with a conformal array), other enfoldable planar array rigid mountings; and towed arrays including a proprietary towed array implementation. Other subsystem implementation concepts considered in study include: the digital signal processor (sizing); and the matched receiver channels.
