Knowledge-Based Spatial-Temporal Hierarchical MIMO Radar Waveform Design Method for Target Detection in Heterogeneous Clutter Zone

Knowledge-based MIMO radar waveform design for target detection in heterogeneous clutter zone is addressed in this paper. In order to improve the detection probability efficiently, a new optimization cost function is developed via minimizing the output clutter peak level and peak sidelobe level of the correlation function on the premise of maintaining the output target signal energy. With constant modulus constraint of transmit waveform, the new cost function is an NP-hard problem. To tackle this problem, a spatial-temporal hierarchical optimization approach is proposed that can decompose the original problem to two hierarchical subproblems approximately. On the foundation of convex programming and cyclic algorithm, the first subproblem, i.e., knowledge-based transmit beampattern design, can be solved effectively. Based on CVX programming and the bi-iterative method, the joint mainlobe synthesized signal and mismatched receiving filter optimization method is proposed to solve the second subproblem. Numerical results show the efficiency of the proposed method.