Modeling and simulation for multistatic coherent MIMO radar

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) radar systems employ multiple transmit and receive elements with transmit elements that have the ability to transmit arbitrary waveforms simultaneously and receive elements that have the ability to process all of the transmitted signals jointly. For ground moving target indication (GMTI) systems, MIMO offers the potential to improve angular resolution and illumination time of the radar and therefore lower the minimum detectable velocity of moving targets. In this paper, we consider GMTI systems consisting of airborne platforms in configurations which include collocated transmit and receive elements on a single platform, distributed transmit/receive elements using multiple platforms, and hybrid arrangements. A multistatic coherent MIMO GMTI model is formulated that consists of multiple spatially distributed, moving, multi-element transmit and receive platforms that form multiple bistatic coherent MIMO pairs. Optimum and adaptive detectors are developed and performance is evaluated via simulation for the multistatic coherent MIMO system as well as each bistatic coherent MIMO pair. A clutter simulation methodology is presented that combines a realistic physics-based bistatic scattering model with a spherically invariant random vector (SIRV) random sample generator.