Exploiting correlation in target detection using MIMO radar with angular diversity

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radars utilize multiple waveforms simultaneously to improve performance. A MIMO radar in which angular diversity is achieved by using widely distributed antennas has been proposed before. This type of system is also known as the statistical MIMO radar. Typically, it has been assumed that the signals received by different antennas are either fully correlated or independent depending on the configuration. We make a more realistic assumption of partially correlated scattering from the target. In this paper, we show that taking the correlation of the scattered signals into account can improve the probability of detecting the target. It is shown that the scattering statistics do not need to be known, but can be estimated reliably from the received signal if a certain type of scattering model is assumed. In this paper, the GLRT using the maximum likelihood estimates of the unknown parameters is proposed for target detection.