Analysis of the Range Ambiguity Function of Narrowband Near-field MIMO Sensing

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how MIMO configurations enhance the sensing range, resolution, and sidelobe performance of narrowband near-field systems, supported by analytical derivations and simulations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of antenna array geometries and MIMO configurations, deriving analytical improvement factors and validating them with simulations.

Findings

MIMO processing improves maximum sensing range by ~1.4 times.

MIMO enhances resolution and sidelobe performance significantly.

Analytical approximation of array factor confirms numerical results.

Abstract

This paper compares the sensing performance of a narrowband near-field system across several practical antenna array geometries and SIMO/MISO and MIMO configurations. For identical transmit and receive apertures, MIMO processing is equivalent to squaring the near-field array factor, resulting in improved beamdepth and sidelobe level. Analytical derivations, supported by simulations, show that the MIMO processing improves the maximum near-field sensing range and resolution by approximately a factor of 1.4 compared to a single-aperture system. Using a quadratic approximation of the mainlobe of the array factor, an analytical improvement factor of $\sqrt{2}$ is derived, validating the numerical results. Finally, MIMO is shown to improve the poor sidelobe performance observed in the near-field by a factor of two, due to squaring of the array factor.