MIMO-OFDM radar for direction estimation

Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) radar makes use of orthogonal signals to obtain the phase delay for each transmitting/receiving antenna pair, and thus increasing the accuracy of direction estimation. The previously proposed MIMO radar assumes narrowband signals that guarantee the waveform orthogonality during the signals' transmission, propagation and reception. However, a narrowband system is unstable in target localisation because of the fluctuation of the target's radar cross section. An MIMO-OFDM radar is proposed for target localisation. It adopts the OFDM technique to simultaneously transmit and receive a set of multiple narrowband orthogonal signals at orthogonal frequencies. A practical model accommodating a physical target is presented to simulate the MIMO-OFDM radar. As an example, a composite target composed of five infinite dielectric cylinders is localised by a four-element uniform linear array. The performance of the MIMO-OFDM radar is investigated by examining the estimation error for different numbers of sub-bands, different signal-to-noise ratios and different target directions. It is demonstrated by simulation that the MIMO-OFDM radar gives more statistically stable estimation by spreading the signal power over a wider spectrum.