Robust transmit beampattern design for uniform linear arrays using correlated LFM waveforms

This paper presents a robust design of the transmit beampattern for uniform linear antenna arrays. Existing designs are usually completed at the stage of achieving an optimal transmit covariance matrix from identifying a weighting matrix with the assumption of ideally orthogonal waveforms. However, we propose a compensation technique to achieve the optimal covariance matrix without the requirement of orthogonality. The corresponding solutions identify a set of weighting matrices that are robust against the imperfection of the waveforms. As a result, a set of easy-to-generate partially correlated linear frequency modulated (LFM) waveforms can be used to achieve identical transmit beampatterns which could be synthesized by ideally orthogonal multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar waveforms. The proposed robust design is evaluated via numerical examples.