Technique for cancellation of elevated clutter for the detection of fixed and ground moving targets under trees

A radar for acquiring a synthetic aperture image of a target on a surface, said target obscured by an elevated clutter at a height above said surface, said radar comprising:

• a radar receiver mounted on a moving platform for illuminating said target obscured by said elevated clutter and for digitizing radar returns reflected from said target on said surface, and from said elevated clutter;
• a computer for performing the steps of:
• motion compensating said radar returns with respect to said target on said surface to obtain a focused first synthetic aperture image of said target on said surface;
• motion compensating said radar returns with respect to said elevated clutter at one or more heights above said surface to obtain one or more focused clutter synthetic aperture images of said elevated clutter at each of said one or more heights;
• identifying said elevated clutter within said one or more focused clutter synthetic aperture images at said one or more heights above said surface;
• coherently subtracting said elevated clutter obtained from each of said one or more clutter synthetic aperture images from said radar returns thereby canceling said elevated clutter from said first synthetic aperture image to obtain an uncluttered image.