MIMO-radar waveform covariance matrix for high SINR and low side-lobe levels

Abstract

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar has better parametric identifiability but compared to phased-array radar, it shows loss in signal-to-noise ratio due to noncoherent processing. To exploit the benefits of both MIMO radar and phased array, a waveform covariance matrix is proposed. To generate the proposed covariance matrix, the values of the cosine function between 0 and π with a step size of πnT are used to form a positive semi-definite Toeplitz matrix, where nT is the number of transmit antennas. The proposed covariance matrix yields gain in the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) compared to MIMO radar and have lower sidelobe levels (SLLs) compared to phased-array, MIMO-radar, and the recently proposed phased-MIMO scheme. Moreover, in contrast to the phased-MIMO scheme, where each antenna transmits a different power, our proposed scheme allows same power transmission from each antenna. Simulation results validate our analytical results. © 2014 IEEE.