MIMO radar: Analysis of SNR, beamwidth and sidelobe level

MIMO radar provides improvements in different system parameters but suffers from SNR and sidelobe level (SLL) degradation. It is shown in this paper that the improvement in beamwidth for fully filled transmit-receive array is achievable only if degradation in peak SLL is acceptable. It is also shown that improvement in beamwidth becomes evident only for sparse array at transmit-receive. SNR degradation for different configurations are also evaluated and it is shown that the same can not be compensated fully by increasing Time-on-Target (TOT). Hence the process of parameter improvements is generally a tradeoff and this paper brings out the interdependence that exist while making such tradeoff.