Detection of heterogeneous samples based on loaded generalized inner product method

Non-homogeneity detector (NHD) is known for improving the detection performance of space time adaptive processing (STAP) in heterogeneous environment. To mitigate the finite sample effect in the generalized inner product (GIP) based NHD, a new type of GIP detector based on diagonal loading (LGIP) is proposed in this paper. We derive the theoretical mean value of LGIP detector based on random matrix theory. Moreover, an approximation of the theoretical mean value is provided for practical considerations. We then apply the derived theoretical mean value of LGIP to the detection of heterogeneous samples. Finally, by theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, we show the effectiveness of the proposed detector.