Multistatic Radar Performance in the Presence of Distributed Wireless Synchronization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multistatic radar system with a wireless synchronization protocol, analyzing how synchronization offsets affect target estimation accuracy and demonstrating potential for practical implementation.

Contribution

It develops a Bayesian Cramer-Rao lower bound framework to quantify synchronization impacts and shows how optimizing synchronization parameters can enhance multistatic radar performance.

Findings

Synchronization offsets degrade target localization accuracy.

Optimized synchronization links can surpass monostatic radar performance.

Practical implementation of the synchronization protocol is feasible.

Abstract

This paper proposes a multistatic radar (MSR) system utilizing a distributed wireless synchronization protocol. The wireless synchronization protocol uses a two-tone waveform exchange for frequency synchronization and a bi-directional waveform exchange for time synchronization, independent of GPS. A Bayesian Cramer-Rao lower bound (BCRLB) framework is developed to quantify the impact of synchronization offsets on joint delay and Doppler estimation, and consequently, on target localization and velocity estimation accuracy. Simulation results derived from the analytical expressions establish the extent to which the residual synchronization offsets degrade the MSR's performance. The performance of the synchronization links primarily depends on the synchronization-link channel and transmit parameters; optimizing these parameters enables the MSR configuration to surpass the monostatic performance and approach the ideal case. Furthermore, the simulated synchronization-link parameters suggest that practical implementation is feasible.