Hybrid SIMO and MIMO sparse array radar

This paper presents a sparse array imaging radar system capable of operating at both single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) mode and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) mode. The hybrid radar modes are realized without any difference in hardware, but simply by switching the scheme of waveform generation in FPGA and post-processing in processors. A comparison has been made between the SIMO mode adopting a chirp waveform and the MIMO mode adopting Gold code waveform based on the code division multiple access (CDMA) method. Mutually complementary properties between the SIMO and the MIMO mode in terms of the cost of computation, the ease of array calibration, and the detectability of targets are demonstrated through an experiment.