Knowledge-Aided Non-Homogeneity Detector for Airborne MIMO Radar STAP

The target detection performance decreases in airborne multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar space-time adaptive processing (STAP) when the training samples contaminated by interference-targets (outliers) signals are used to estimate the covariance matrix. To address this problem, a knowledge-aided (KA) generalized inner product non-homogeneity detector (GIP NHD) is proposed for MIMO-STAP. Firstly, the clutter subspace knowledge is constructed by the system parameters of MIMO radar STAP. Secondly, the clutter basis vectors are utilized to compose the clutter covariance matrix offline. Then, the GIP NHD is integrated to realize the effective training samples selection, which eliminates the effect of the outliers in training samples on target detection. Simulation results demonstrate that in non-homogeneous clutter environment, the proposed KA-GIP NHD can eliminate the outliers more effectively and improve the target detection performance of MIMO radar STAP compared with the conventional GIP NHD, which is more valuable for practical engineering application

Adaptive Illumination Patterns for Radar Applications

The fundamental goal of Fully Adaptive Radar (FAR) involves full exploitation of the joint, synergistic adaptivity of the radar\u27s transmitter and receiver. Little work has been done to exploit the joint space time Degrees-of-Freedom (DOF) available via an Active Electronically Steered Array (AESA) during the radar\u27s transmit illumination cycle. This research introduces Adaptive Illumination Patterns (AIP) as a means for exploiting this previously untapped transmit DOF. This research investigates ways to mitigate clutter interference effects by adapting the illumination pattern on transmit. Two types of illumination pattern adaptivity were explored, termed Space Time Illumination Patterns (STIP) and Scene Adaptive Illumination Patterns (SAIP). Using clairvoyant knowledge, STIP demonstrates the ability to remove sidelobe clutter at user specified Doppler frequencies, resulting in optimum receiver performance using a non-adaptive receive processor. Using available database knowledge, SAIP demonstrated the ability to reduce training data heterogeneity in dense target environments, thereby greatly improving the minimum discernable velocity achieved through STAP processing

Regularized Estimation of High-dimensional Covariance Matrices.

Many signal processing methods are fundamentally related to the estimation of covariance matrices. In cases where there are a large number of covariates the dimension of covariance matrices is much larger than the number of available data samples. This is especially true in applications where data acquisition is constrained by limited resources such as time, energy, storage and bandwidth. This dissertation attempts to develop necessary components for covariance estimation in the high-dimensional setting. The dissertation makes contributions in two main areas of covariance estimation: (1) high dimensional shrinkage regularized covariance estimation and (2) recursive online complexity regularized estimation with applications of anomaly detection, graph tracking, and compressive sensing. New shrinkage covariance estimation methods are proposed that significantly outperform previous approaches in terms of mean squared error. Two multivariate data scenarios are considered: (1) independently Gaussian distributed data; and (2) heavy tailed elliptically contoured data. For the former scenario we improve on the Ledoit-Wolf (LW) shrinkage estimator using the principle of Rao-Blackwell conditioning and iterative approximation of the clairvoyant estimator. In the latter scenario, we apply a variance normalizing transformation and propose an iterative robust LW shrinkage estimator that is distribution-free within the elliptical family. The proposed robustified estimator is implemented via fixed point iterations with provable convergence and unique limit. A recursive online covariance estimator is proposed for tracking changes in an underlying time-varying graphical model. Covariance estimation is decomposed into multiple decoupled adaptive regression problems. A recursive recursive group lasso is derived using a homotopy approach that generalizes online lasso methods to group sparse system identification. By reducing the memory of the objective function this leads to a group lasso regularized LMS that provably dominates standard LMS. Finally, we introduce a state-of-the-art sampling system, the Modulated Wideband Converter (MWC) which is based on recently developed analog compressive sensing theory. By inferring the block-sparse structures of the high-dimensional covariance matrix from a set of random projections, the MWC is capable of achieving sub-Nyquist sampling for multiband signals with arbitrary carrier frequency over a wide bandwidth.Ph.D.Electrical Engineering: SystemsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86396/1/yilun_1.pd