Airborne FDA-MIMO Radar Modeling and Detection Performance Analysis

Abstract

In the conventional frequency diverse array (FDA) radar designs, generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) detection utilizes coherent pulses. However, the impacts of an FDA multiple-input multiple-output (FDA-MIMO) radar system for detection with incoherent pulses have not been systematically investigated. In this paper, we present an incoherent square-law detector to analyse the performance of both the coherent and non-coherent airborne FDA-MIMO radars in a Neyman-Pearson sense. Moreover, the closed-form expressions of an incoherent square-law detector for the FDA-MIMO radars are derived. For a coherent FDA-MIMO radar, the optimal performance is achieved at a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), whereas the superiority of a non-coherent FDA-MIMO radar in distinguishing range dependent targets is validated. The corresponding theoretical derivations are verified by the extensive numerical results to show an improved performance.