On detection performance of MIMO radar for Rician target

By using spatial diversity, multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) radar can improve detection performance for fluctuating targets. In this paper, we propose a spatial fluctuation target model for MIMO radar, where targets are classified as non-fluctuating target, Rayleigh target and Rician target. Based on Stein's lemma, we use relative entropy to study detection performance of optimum detector for Rician target. It is found that in low signal noise ratio (SNR) region, the performance improvement of MIMO radar for detecting Rician target depends on array gain, which is related to the number of receivers. In high SNR region, the improvement of performance depends on diversity gain, which is related to the product of the number of receivers and the number of transmitters. The conclusions of this paper are important for designing MIMO radar system.