INNOVATIVE C4I TECHNOLOGIES

Airborne bistatic radar has been drawing great interest in recent years. A major portion of the attention is drawn to its potential in an airborne configuration, where, for example, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is used as a passive receiver, and interest in space-based systems is also likely to be high in the future. Adequacy of the exisitng space-time adaptive processing (STAP) algorithms in such settings is of great concern. The proposed effort considers the effects of the bistatic geometry on space=time adaptive processing. The goal is both to characterize a parametric model for the received bistatic waveform and to develop a MATLAB based signal processing/evaluation tool. The result is a means to describe and assess how the characteristics of the received signal depend on platform motion, beam profile, internal clutter motion, and the three-dimensional bistatic geometry. This work will be necessary when evaluating a large inventory of STAP algortihms specific for bistatic space-based radars. There are four tasks to be accomplished. First, we will implement formulas for the bistatic geometry relationships (these are described in detail in section d). Second, a bistatic equivalent of the constant Gamma model for out-of-plane scattering. Those results are then combined to produce a MATLAB based for the purpose of generating simulated bistatic received waveforms. This data generation capability provides an input process for the parametric evaluation of the STAP algorithms. Finally, verificaiton using measured bistatic data will be performed, and the issues of extending the results to the space-based bistatic systems will be investigated.