Spatial-Temporal-Frequency Diversity in Radar Sensor Networks

In this paper, the spatial-temporal-frequency diversity to improve the detection performance of Radar Sensor Networks (RSN) in the presence of certain types of interference (clutter, jamming, noise and interference between radar sensors) is studied. In order to reduce the interference between radar sensors and maximize the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), we propose a method using the orthogonality criterion to design waveforms for radar sensors in the network. Besides the interference between radar sensors, performance of the network depends largely on other interference, especially clutter, which is extended in both angle and range, and is spread in Doppler frequency. By using the spatial-temporal diversity, we can suppress effects of these interference. In this paper, we also propose a receiver for diversity combining in RSN. As an application example, we apply the spatial-temporal-frequency diversity scheme to improve the detection performance or reduce the missdetection probability at a low false alarm probability. Simulation results for both non-fluctuating targets and fluctuating targets show that the performance of our proposed scheme is superior to that of the single radar with the spatial-temporal diversity only.