Reconfigurable Subaperturing for Endo-clutter Processing

The objective of this proposal is to develop a dynamically reconfigurable subaperature array architecture to achieve enhanced endo-clutter and interference suppression and realize target detection and identification. In addition, protection against mainbeam jamming is also addressed here using distributed Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) sensor technology. Generally, array manifold errors make it more difficult to perform clutter nulling while placing a sharp null exclusively on the jammer. For this purpose smart transmit subaperture beamforming together with adaptive nulling algorithms at the receiver side are proposed. The transmit subarray patterns will be synthesized to minimize the impact of the jammer. As a result, the clutter strength is significantly reduced thus enabling target detection. The return signals are used to generate adaptive weight vectors to combine the receiver outputs in such a way as to place effective nulls automatically along the jammer directions, thus enhancing the output signal to interference/jammer plus noise ratio. Thus a transmit pattern synthesized from subaperture manifolds together with an adaptive receiver array in the MIMO mode results in superior clutter nulling. In this context, the question of partitioning the original array manifold to generate an optimum subaperture manifold is addressed.