| Experimental Analysis of Auxiliary-Channel Clutter Characteristics in Σ– Δ STAP Using Flight-Test Data |
Jinuk Kim 
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Avionics Radar System Team, Hanwha Systems, Yongin, Republic of Korea |
Correspondence:
Jinuk Kim,Email: rex0725@hanwha.com
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Received: 1 April 2026 • Revised: 25 May 2026 • Accepted: 20 July 2026 |
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| Abstract |
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This paper presents an experimental analysis of clutter subspace characteristics and adaptive filtering performance for different auxiliarychannel configurations in reduced-dimension Σ– Δ STAP (space–time adaptive processing) using real flight-test data obtained from a forward-looking airborne monopulse radar system. The Σ– ΔAZ, Σ– ΔEL, and Σ– ΔAZ–ΔEL configurations were compared in terms of clutter correlation, clutter effective rank, clutter suppression ratio (CSR), and signal-to-clutter-plus-noise ratio (SCNR). The results show that, in the considered forward-looking airborne radar geometry, the Σ–ΔAZ configuration maintains high clutter correlation with the Σ channel and forms a compact clutter subspace, resulting in superior clutter suppression and target detection performance. In contrast, the additional ΔEL channel increases the covariance dimension without effectively representing the dominant clutter subspace, resulting in limited additional performance improvement. These results demonstrate that reduced-dimension Σ– Δ STAP performance is fundamentally governed not by the number of auxiliary channels, but by how efficiently the auxiliary channels represent the dominant clutter subspace. |
| Key words:
Airborne Radar, Clutter Analysis, Clutter Subspace, Monopulse Radar, Reduced-Dimension STAP |
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