Spatial-Temporal Differential Analysis for GMTD with Airborne Radars, Part 2: First Experimental Results

Abstract

We consider an application of the spatial-temporal differential analysis (STDA) technique to the ground-moving target detection (GMTD) using airborne radars with multiple receive channels. STDA is a new approach, suitable to processing multiple radar signals which utilizes spatial and temporal scintillations in the instantaneous signal power. To test the practical potential of STDA, we used Multi-Channel Airborne Radar Measurements (MCARM) database, which was developed to test and improve space-time adaptive processing (STAP). In particular, we processed the MCARM file rd050575, obtained from flight 5, cycle d, and acquisition 575. The goal was to detect the Sabreliner airplane flying towards the radar-carrying airplane BAC1-11 in the presence of urban, land, and sea clutter. Second-order structure functions for multiple radar signals were used for the processing. This simplified STDA technique applied in the time domain only provides a good performance by detecting the Sabreliner with a false alarm rate below 10 -10 in the same range bin where it was previously detected using several STAP variants.