Spatial correlation analysis on radar echoes of MIMO radar

Spatial correlation between the amplitudes of radar echoes has a great impact on the signal processing methods and the performance of MIMO radar. There is an urge need to analyze the spatial correlation in order to optimize the performance of radar system. In this paper, we model the target consisting of a finite number of scatterers distributed in three dimensions, and derive the formula to evaluate the spatial correlation between the echoes from different aspects. Furthermore, we precisely analyze the relationships between the spatial correlation and some important factors, such as the effective baselength and the scattering pattern. We also do experiments with the real models of two certain aircrafts. More importantly, reasonable physical interpretation for the simulation results is presented and the conclusions can be used in practical work.