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It is presumed that using multiple antennas at the transmit and receive sides can improve the radar's performance. One such improvement can be achieved in the detection of extended targets. However, in such multiple-input multiple-output systems, proper design of the transmit signals is an obstacle that can have significant influence on the performance. In this study, enforcing the peak-to-average-ratio (PAR) constraint, the authors consider the problem of transmit space-time code and receive space-time filter design of such a system detecting extended targets. In addition, the power allocation among the different antennas is another degree of freedom that should be optimised under a total power constraint. Here, the authors derive a constrained optimisation procedure for transmit code, receive filter and transmit powers, which sequentially improves the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio of the system.

The authors deal with the robust design of multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) space–time transmit code (STTC) and space–time receive filter (STRF) for a point-like target embedded in signal-dependent interference. Specifically, they assume that the radar exploits knowledge provided by dynamic environmental database, to roughly predict the actual scattering scenario. Then, they devise an iterative method to optimise the (constrained) STTC and the (constrained) STRF which sequentially improves the worst-case (over interfering scatterers statistics) signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). Each iteration of the algorithm is handled via solving two (hidden) convex optimisation problems. The resulting computational complexity is linear with the number of iterations and polynomial with the sizes of the STTC and the STRF. At the analysis stage, they assess the performance of the proposed algorithm in terms of the achieved SINR. They show that properly exploiting the spatial degrees of freedom offered by the MIMO system, it is possible to obtain considerable SINR gains with respect to the conventional single-input–single-output system. Moreover, their results highlight the capability of the proposed method to robustify the performance of the designed system against possible knowledge inaccuracies.

Efficient combination of MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) and PCL (passive coherent location) ideas is expected to improve performance of localization schemes. While, in general, adding the number of transmit and receive antennas provides spatial diversity, it is possible to obtain similar effects by using multiple transmitters that are already transmitting standard signals (such as digital TV (DTV) transmission) in the environment (also known as illuminators of opportunity). However, in the case of passive schemes, it is not always possible to ensure that signals of different transmitters are orthogonal to each other. In such cases in which nonorthogonal transmitter signals are to be used, resolving signals of multiple transmitters reflected from multiple objects is not a trivial problem. One such scenario arises when transmitters of a single frequency network (SFN) are used. Consequently, in order to obtain the desired diversity gain and maintain the correct localization, it is necessary to develop proper techniques to assign each echo that arrives at the receivers to a given transmitter and a specific object that is to be localized. We propose a scheme that addresses the association problem in an efficient way.

Efficient combination of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) and passive coherent location (PCL) ideas is expected to improve performance of localisation schemes. While using multiple antennas at transmit and receive sides provides spatial diversity, it is possible to obtain similar performance by using multiple transmitters, already transmitting standard signals (such as digital TV) in the environment (also known as illuminators of opportunity). However, in this case, it is not always possible to ensure that signals of different transmitters are orthogonal to each other. In such cases, resolving signals of multiple transmitters reflected from multiple objects is not a trivial problem. One such scenario arises when transmitters of a single frequency network (SFN) are used. Consequently, in order to obtain the desired diversity gain, it is necessary to develop proper techniques to assign each echo arriving at the receiver to a given transmitter and a specific object to be localised. In this paper, we propose a scheme that addresses the association problem in an efficient way. Also, we consider the case of multiple antennas only at the transmit side while using a single receiver, which is the case of a multi-input single-output (MISO) system, a subset of MIMO systems, in general.