Spatial smoothing for coherent MIMO radar setups with minimum redundancy

This paper covers coherent MIMO radar systems with collocated antennas combined with minimum redundancy principles. The fundament of the first are virtual arrays which can be considered as discrete convolution of transmitter and receiver distributions. This technique can be connected to sparse arrays regarding minimum redundancy (MR) aspects. However, MR setups are usually suited for so-called uncorrelated signal scenarios, whereas coherent MIMO radar setups provide correlated or coherent signal outputs. The standard angular signal processing of MR arrays would become corrupted in coherent signal case. The spatial smoothing algorithm can provide a possible solution for this conflict by lateral shifts. However, the pure amount of required shifts would make the idea of sparse arrays obsolete. Therefore, the spatial smoothing algorithm was adapted in order to find also sparse lateral shift positions. The solution could again be found by means of minimum redundancy. This paper presents simulation results which were generated during design and implementation of radar sensors.