Co-Design of Waveform Correlation Matrix and Antenna Positions for MIMO Radar Transmit Beampattern Formation

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the problems of co-design of the waveform correlation matrix (WCM) and antenna positions (AP) for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar transmit beampattern formation. To design beampattern with good behaviors, we propose two co-design methods. In the first method, the co-design problem of WCM and AP is formulated by minimizing the mean square error (MSE) between the designed beampattern and a desired one. The second method optimizes the WCM and AP to control the mainlobe ripples and the peak sidelobe level. Moreover, the lower- and upper-bound constraints are also considered within some predefined regions, for both two optimization problems. The co-design schemes provide an extra degree of freedom (DoF) to enhance the transmit beampattern behaviors but also make optimization problems very difficult to solve. To cope with the resultant optimization problems, a successive convex approximation (SCA) algorithm is devised. Finally, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the superiorities of the co-design schemes over state-of-the-art methods in terms of the beampattern behaviors.