Achieving full diversity in MIMO radar: Code Construction and performance bounds

Spatial diversity is a major technique to combat fading, and represents a primary competitor of alternative, more resource-consuming strategies, such as frequency diversity. Starting upon a Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) radar system, the present paper lays out the theoretical background to design optimized space-time codes, in the presence of possibly correlated clutter: general criteria to achieve maximum diversity order, as dictated by Information Theory, are established. The main design and analysis tool is the Chernoff bound, and the theoretical implications suggested by this analytical technique are validated through numerical simulations.