A General Ziv-Zakai Bound for DoA Estimation in MIMO Radar Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive Ziv-Zakai Bound for DoA estimation in MIMO radar, accounting for multiple targets, input covariance, and snapshot effects, providing insights into estimation limits across various system parameters.

Contribution

It develops a general ZZB for MIMO radar DoA estimation that includes multi-target scenarios and input covariance, extending classical bounds to more complex, realistic conditions.

Findings

ZZB is tighter than CRB in low SNR regimes.

Increasing transmit antennas reduces the threshold SNR for CRB transition.

Number of targets influences the bound's behavior across SNR regimes.

Abstract

This paper derives a Ziv-Zakai Bound (ZZB) on the Mean Squared Error (MSE) for Direction-of-Arrival (DoA) estimation in co-located Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) radar systems and provides closed-form expressions that hold for multi-target scenarios. Unlike classical results that address single-input multiple-output systems with complex Gaussian input signals, the developed ZZB in this paper explicitly accounts for a general input covariance matrix, target radar cross-section statistics and multiple snapshot effects, and admits a compact expression that reveals the dependence of the MSE on the number of transmit antennas, number of targets, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and the transmit covariance matrix. Numerical simulations validate the tightness of the ZZB in the a priori dominated region and show how the increase of the number of transmit antennas compresses the threshold SNR for the transition to the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) while the variation of the number of targets shifts the bound's behavior across SNR regimes. The analytical results and numerical simulations demonstrate that the ZZB is tighter than the CRB, particularly in the low SNR regime.