PSWF-based decoupled atomic norm minimization for DOD and DOA estimation in MIMO radar with arbitrary linear arrays

Abstract

Decoupled atomic norm minimization (D-ANM) is a computationally-efficient gridless two-dimensional parameter estimation method via dividing the two-level Toeplitz matrix into two one-level matrices, and can be applied to the one-snapshot direction-of-departure (DOD) and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation in bistatic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar with uniform linear arrays (ULAs). Nevertheless, in actual applications, the transmitting and receiving arrays are not always ULAs, which leads to the Toeplitz structure not satisfied and the regular D-ANM algorithm not available. In this work, the one-snapshot DOD and DOA estimation in bistatic MIMO radar with arbitrary linear arrays (ALAs) is investigated. The Prolate spheroidal wave functions (PSWFs) are utilized to express such a D-ANM problem followed by a semi-definite programming (SDP) solution. The PSWF-based method can extend the application of D-ANM from ULAs to ALAs, and avoid the grid partition of the conventional sparse representation methods. The numerical experiments are conducted to verify the proposed method.