Phased-MIMO Radar: A Tradeoff Between Phased-Array and MIMO Radars

TL;DR

This paper introduces phased-MIMO radar, a technique that combines the advantages of MIMO and phased-array radars by partitioning the array into overlapping subarrays for improved resolution and coherent processing gain.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel phased-MIMO radar method that maintains phased-array gain while achieving MIMO resolution through overlapping subarrays and orthogonal waveforms.

Findings

Enhanced beampatterns demonstrated analytically.

Improved signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratios shown in simulations.

Validation of the technique's effectiveness through analytical and simulation results.

Abstract

We propose a new technique for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar with colocated antennas which we call phased-MIMO radar. The new technique enjoys the advantages of MIMO radar without sacrificing the main advantage of phased-array radar which is the coherent processing gain at the transmitting side. The essence of the proposed technique is to partition the transmitting array into a number of subarrays that are allowed to overlap. Then, each subarray is used to coherently transmit a waveform which is orthogonal to the waveforms transmitted by other subarrays. Coherent processing gain can be achieved by designing a weight vector for each subarray to form a beam towards a certain direction in space. Moreover, the subarrays are combined jointly to form a MIMO radar resulting in higher resolution capabilities. The substantial improvements offered by the proposed phased-MIMO radar technique as compared to previous techniques are demonstrated analytically and by simulations through analysis of the corresponding beampatterns and achievable output signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratios. Both analytical and simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed phased-MIMO radar.