Published on Jun 05, 2023
Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) refers to a class of signal processing techniques used to process returns of an antenna array radar system. It enhances the ability of radars to detect targets that might otherwise be obscured by clutter or jamming. The output of STAP is a linear combination or weighted sum of the input signal samples.
The "adaptive" in STAP refers to the fact that STAP weights are computed to reflect the actual noise, clutter and jamming environment in which the radar finds itself. The "space" in STAP refers to the fact that STAP the STAP weights (applied to the signal samples at each of the elements of the antenna array) at one instant of time define an antenna pattern in space.
If there are jammers in the field of view, STAP will adapt the radar antenna pattern by placing nulls in the directions those jammers thus rejecting jammer power. The "time" in STAP refers to the fact that the STAP weights applied to the signal samples at one antenna element over the entire dwell define a system impulse response and hence a system frequency response.STAP is a multi-dimensional adaptive signal processing technique over spatial and temporal samples. In this approach, the input data collected from several antenna sensors has a cubic form.
Depending on how this input data cube is processed, STAP is classified into Higher Order Post-Doppler (HOPD), Element Space Pre-Doppler, Element Space Post-Doppler, Beam Space Pre-Doppler, and Beam Space Post-Doppler. STAP consists of three major computation steps. First, a set of rules called the training strategy is used to select data which will be processed in the subsequent computation. The second step is weight computation. It requires solving a set of linear equations.
