Moving Target Detection in Spatially Heterogeneous Clutter Using Distributed MIMO Radar

In this paper, we consider the problem of moving target detection in distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar under the assumption of non-homogeneous environment. In particular, we assume the spatial heterogeneous clutter, i.e., clutter reflections from different range bins to be independent and the clutter power changes from one cell to another. Even under the same test cell, the clutter components associated with different transmit-receive pairs are dissimilar due to the azimuth-selective back-scattering of the non-homogeneous clutter. A new method for estimating the non-homogeneous clutter for every transmit-receive pair in a distributed MIMO radar is developed. For each transmit-receive path, the non-homogeneous clutter is modeled as a linear combination of appropriately selected basis vectors. The clutter component is adaptively estimated based on maximizing the clutter power and maximally rejecting the power associated with target reflections. A generalized-likelihood ratio test (GLRT) for moving target detection is also developed. Simulations are provided to demonstrate the performance improvement of the proposed GLRT over existing techniques.