Transmit waveform synthesis for MIMO radar using spatial-temporal decomposition of correlation matrix

In order to synthesize a desired spatial beampattern, which is mapped into a waveform correlation matrix, a computationally attractive method is proposed in this paper. This method decomposes the correlation matrix into a spatial direction matrix (SDM) and a temporal division matrix (TDM). Then the SDM is formed by using a set of transmit steering vectors, whose angles can be estimated by MUSIC, and the TDM is constructed by (0, 1)-matrix and orthogonal (uncorrelated) waveforms. The proposed algorithm leads to constant-modulus transmit signals with good auto and cross-correlation properties. Furthermore, this algorithm achieves almost the same performance as the cyclic algorithm while having lower computational complexity than the existing methods. A number of numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.