Abstract: A clutter model for truncated cone array space time adaptive processing (STAP) is presented in this article. Based on this model, an optimal space time filter for the clutter suppression of a truncated cone array is derived. To enable the adaptive processing method to be applied to real environment, the generalization of the joint domain localized(JDL) algorithm to a truncated cone array is discussed and the transformed matrix of the JDL algorithm for a truncated cone array is obtained. The number of channels as well as the azimuth angle interval are analyzed, which should be selected for minimum signal to interference and noise ratio(SINR) loss of reduced dimension. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that through proper selection of parameters, such as number of channels and azimuth angle intervals, the generalized JDL algorithm is able to obtain suboptimum performance with less training samples and much less computation load.

Key words: space time adaptive processing, truncated cone array, clutter model, optimal processing, joint domain localized algorithm