A further study on nonlinear space-time adaptive processing with higher order statistics

Many array processing methods with higher order statistics (HOS) have been developed in the last three decades. One of the main interests in using HOS relies on the increase of effective aperture and the number of sensors of the considered array. In particular, a nonlinear space-time adaptive processing (STAP) method using HOS, which is able to enhance the system degrees of freedom (DOFs), has been employed on the radar system with nested array in recent years. In this work, we further study the nonlinear space-time adaptive processing with HOS (HOS-STAP) based on the phased array radar system with uniform linear array (ULA). The purpose of this paper is to provide some important insights into the HOS-STAP, such as the output response, the SINR, the minimum detectable velocity (MDV) and the effect of internal clutter motion (ICM), via the numerical experiment. The simulations are also carried out for contrast with the conventional STAP. The results illustrate that the HOS-STAP can gain a narrower target main beam, a lower side-lobe level, an improvement of MDV performance and a less negative effect of ICM, under the condition of the same number of the array elements and the transmitting pulses.