Evaluation of a Time-Domain Adaptive Beamformer for Regional Phase Detection

Abstract We evaluate the output from the time-domain adaptive beamformer (ABF) developed by Shen (1979) coupled to both incoherent (short-term average/long-term average [STA/LTA]) and coherent F -statistic (FSTAT) detectors. Detection test results on regional phases are compared to the baseline conventional beamformer output coupled to both STA/LTA and FSTAT detectors. Examples and test results are presented that demonstrate reduced detection thresholds, improved clutter rejection, and lower false-alarm rates with a time-domain ABF coupled to either STA/LTA or FSTAT detectors with significant reductions in the false-alarm rate observed for the ABF coupled to the FSTAT detector.