Linear bi-pulse precoding for MIMO radar transmitters

A conventional MIMO radar system with widely separated transmitters and receivers is designed to emit an independent orthogonal pulse from each of its transmitting antennas. This paper presents a pulse precoding scheme for MIMO radars where two pulses are jointly linearly coded across two transmitters to increase the overall system performance. The algorithm is specifically designed to link the gap between these two extreme cases of emitting a single pulse or two coded pulse in a smooth manner while ensuring that the number of waveforms in use is kept constant. The coding strategy makes use of statistical radar information emphasizing line-of-sight (LOS) reflectivity levels which introduce limited beamforming gain to the system. Simulations are used to demonstrate that the use of statistical information and pulse precoding can be beneficial even for widely separated antennas.