Clutter Covariance Matrix Estimation via KA-SADMM for STAP

To tackle the issue of space-time adaptive processing (STAP) performance degradation caused by inaccurate estimation of the clutter covariance matrix (CCM) with limited sample support, a knowledge-aided (KA) CCM estimation algorithm based on the symmetric alternating direction method of multiplier (KA-SADMM) is proposed. The CCM estimation problem is constructed based on the knowledge of persymmetric structure, the low-rank structure, and the prior covariance matrix, and the solution to the resulting problem is derived. Moreover, the contraction property of the sequence generated by KA-SADMM with respect to the solution set of the estimation problem is analyzed. With limited training samples, the simulation results show that the proposed algorithm improves the STAP performance over other similar algorithms by at least about 0.2 dB when the prior knowledge is accurate and by at least 0.3 dB when the prior knowledge is inaccurate.