Radar waveform design with the two step mutual information

Waveform design over two consecutive transmission time instants or epochs is the focus of this paper. The waveforms are designed to maximize the mutual information (MI) over the two time epochs. For a single epoch, maximizing the MI is equivalent to waterfilling. In this paper it is shown that for two epochs, the designed waveforms must satisfy two criteria. The first is waterfilling, and the other is that the waveforms must place energies in those spectral bands which offer maximum un-correlated target scattering responses. The interplay of these two criteria causes the waveforms to be distinct from those designed by the single-epoch waterfilling-based systems. Comparisons of the waveforms designed over one epoch, and over two epochs are shown through simulations.