A virtual nested MIMO array exploiting fourth order difference coarray

Zhe Fu (1) , Pascal Chargé (1) , Yide Wang (1)

1 IETR - Institut d'Électronique et des Technologies du numéRique

In active direction of arrivals (DOA) sensing, themultiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar can lead to moredegrees of freedom (DOFs). The DOFs can be further increasedwhen the fourth order cumulants are used in MIMO. However,most array geometries are not designed for fourth ordercumulants based MIMO and this array geometry optimizationproblem is still an open issue. To have a simple guideline forthis optimization problem, we reformulate it into two separateproblems, which are a fourth order sum coarray optimizationproblem and a second order difference coarray problem. Thefourth order sum coarray optimization is realized by solvinga postage stamp problem and a virtual nested array can beobtained. The number of elements in this virtual nested arraycan be significantly increased with only a few physical sensors.The corresponding inter-element spacing of virtual nested arrayis expanded simultaneously. Then the second order differencecoarray is adopted to the virtual nested array to further increasethe DOFs. Numerical results validate the high DOFs achieved byour proposition.

Mots clés: virtual nested array; MIMO; Fourth order cumulants; postage stamp problem.

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]; Autre; Electronique

Zhe Fu, Pascal Chargé, Yide Wang. A virtual nested MIMO array exploiting fourth order difference coarray. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, 2020, 27, pp.1140-1144. ⟨10.1109/LSP.2020.3003831⟩. ⟨hal-02872110⟩