MIMO radar: an idea whose time has come

It has recently been shown that multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna systems have the potential to improve dramatically the performance of communication systems over single antenna systems. Unlike beamforming, which presumes a high correlation between signals either transmitted or received by an array, the MIMO concept exploits the independence between signals at the array elements. In conventional radar, target scintillations are regarded as a nuisance parameter that degrades radar performance. The novelty of MIMO radar is that it takes the opposite view; namely, it capitalizes on target scintillations to improve the radar's performance. We introduce the MIMO concept for radar. The MIMO radar system…