Frequency-based target localization methods for widely separated MIMO radar

Abstract

Frequency-based localization methods are widely used to find emitter locations. Several techniques are described in the literature for emitter localization based on Doppler frequency shifts. These techniques can be used efficiently for emitter localization by using narrowband signals. Although these methods are simple and efficient, the application to the radar systems for target localization is very limited. In this paper, a new low-complexity target localization method, Target Localization via Doppler Frequencies (TLDF), for Doppler-only Multi-Input, Multi-Output (MIMO) radar with widely separated stations is described. By using widely separated MIMO radars with unmodulated continuous wave signals, the received frequencies and the Doppler shifts can be estimated efficiently. The position and the velocity of the target can be found from these estimated frequencies by a search in the position space. As the Doppler frequency is estimated efficiently, not only the target velocity but also the direction of the target is estimated accurately with the TLDF method. The Cramer-Rao Bounds (CRB) are calculated for the target velocity and the target position estimations in two-dimensional space. In simulations, the proposed method is compared with the iso-Doppler curves-based traditional method and with the CRB for different geometries. The performance of the proposed method is not affected from the target amplitude fluctuations because of its frequency-based nature. Finally, the comparison between the frequency-only MIMO radar and the pulsed monostatic radar is investigated, and the simplicity and the efficiency of the proposed method are demonstrated.