MIMO radar sensitivity analysis for target detection

For multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar with widely separated antennas, we consider the effect of imperfect orthogonality of the received signals on detection performance. In practice, mutual orthogonality among the received signals cannot be achieved for all Doppler and delay pairs. We introduce a data model considering the correlation among the data from different transmitter-receiver pairs as unknown parameters. Based on the expectation-maximization algorithm, we propose a method to estimate the target, correlation, and noise parameters. We then use these estimates to develop a statistical decision test. Using the asymptotical statistical characteristics and the numerical performance of the test, we analyze the sensitivity of the MIMO radar with respect to changes in the cross-correlation levels of the measurements. In our numerical examples, we demonstrate the effect of the increase in the correlation among the received signals from different transmitters on the detection performance.