A reduced-dimension RML method for transmit beamspace-based MIMO radar

Abstract

In this paper, the problem of low angle estimation for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar is considered. Though the refined maximum likelihood (RML) algorithm can be directly applied to low angle estimation in MIMO radar, its computational burden is huge due to the large virtual aperture. Moreover, the conventional MIMO radar employs full waveform diversity, which actually sacrifices the emission gain. To reduce the computational burden and improve the transmit gain, a reduced-dimension RML method for transmit beamspace-based (TB-based) MIMO radar is developed. Firstly, the transmit beamspace (TB) matrix is designed to focus the transmit energy within the desired spatial sector. Then, to reduce the computational complexity and retain the estimation precision of the direct RML (D-RML) method for TB-based MIMO radar, a transmit-receive separate RML (TRS-RML) method is developed by applying the RML algorithm to the transmit and receive side respectively. Moreover, we propose to fuse the estimation results of the transmit and receive side together to improve the estimation precision. Theoretical analysis shows the TRS-RML method requires much lower computational burden than D-RML method. Numerical experiments show the proposed method has higher estimation accuracy compared with the D-RML method for the conventional MIMO radar in most angle region.