Constrained optimal design of automotive radar arrays using the Weiss-Weinstein Bound

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel array design method for automotive MIMO radar that optimizes antenna placement based on the Weiss-Weinstein Bound, improving DoA estimation performance under various constraints.

Contribution

It presents a new optimization approach for antenna array design using the Weiss-Weinstein Bound tailored for automotive radar applications with spatial constraints.

Findings

Optimized arrays outperform uniform and minimum redundancy arrays in simulations.

Performance gains are consistent across a wide range of SNR values.

Method accommodates various spatial constraints and antenna configurations.

Abstract

We propose a design strategy for optimizing antenna positions in linear arrays for far-field Direction of Arrival (DoA) estimation of narrow-band sources in collocated MIMO radar. Our methodology allows to consider any spatial constraints and number of antennas, using as optimization function the Weiss- Weinstein bound formulated for an observation model with random target phase and known SNR, over a pre-determined Field-of-View (FoV). Optimized arrays are calculated for the typical case of a 77GHz MIMO radar of 3Tx and 4Rx channels. Simulations demonstrate a performance improvement of the proposed arrays compared to the corresponding uniform and minimum redundancy arrays for a wide regime of SNR values.