Cramer–Rao bound of parameters estimation and coherence performance for next generation radar

In this study, a general signal-processing architecture is proposed for next generation radar (NGR). When the NGR works in MIMO mode, we derive the closed-form Cramer–Rao bound of the estimation of coherent-processing parameters, which include the time-delay differences and phase synchronisation errors among different apertures. When the NGR turns to work in fully coherent mode, assuming the time-delay differences are ideally compensated, the authors present the closedform signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain and analyse the SNR gain loss of the NGR because of inaccurate phase synchronisation errors.