Mitigation of Radar Clutter Using Algorithmic Techniques

The objective of this proposal is to develop enhanced clutter and interference suppression methods to perform target detection and identification in presence of a cluttered environment. In addition, protection against mainbeam jamming is also addressed here using distributed Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) sensor technology. For this purpose smart transmit beamforming using together with adaptive nulling algorithms at the receiver side are proposed. The transmit array pattern can be synthesized to minimize the impact of the jammer. As a result, even a mainbeam jammer that is close by is also illuminated, the jammer 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. Moreover, these adaptive weight vectors can be implemented for various look directions. Thus a transmit pattern together with an adaptive receiver array in the MIMO mode results in superior clutter nulling and is an effective counter-measure against mainbeam jamming.