Search

Dual-function radar-communication (DFRC) systems with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) make efficient use of spectrum, while maintaining reliable robustness against multipath fading for communication and improved estimation accuracy for radar. Nevertheless, it would be costly to use a fully digital beamforming architecture, where each antenna is equipped with a radio frequency (RF) chain. This motivates us to consider hybrid beamforming for OFDM-DFRC system in this work. More specifically, the analog beamformer for the whole bandwidth and digital beamformer for each subcarrier are simultaneously designed, by jointly optimizing the spectral efficiency (SE) of communication and spatial spectrum matching error (SSME) of radar. To tackle the resulting optimization problem, a consensus alternating direction method of multipliers (consensus-ADMM) approach is devised. Further, in a practical sense, we consider the issue of hybrid transmit beamforming design with finite-resolution phase shifters, to facilitate economical implementation of the analog beamformer. Numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel strategy to simultaneously estimate the direction of arrival (DOA) of a source signal and the phase error of a partly calibrated array with arbitrary geometry. We add up the snapshot data of two different sensors, and then extract a knowledge associated with the DOA and phase errors of these two elements by using singular value decomposition. In such a manner, we can establish a series of linear equations with respect to the unknown DOA and phase error, by simply conducting the procedure on any two sensor elements. On this basis, it can be shown that the problem of jointly estimating DOA and phase error is equivalent to a least square (LS) problem with a quadratic equality constraint. To solve this LS problem (so that the DOA and phase error can be obtained), an effective convex–concave procedure is employed. Different from the conventional algorithms that are limited to specific array geometries, the proposed one is suitable for arrays with arbitrary geometries. More importantly, the devised method only requires one extra calibrated sensor, which is not necessarily adjacently located with the reference one. Several simulations are carried out in this paper and the effectiveness of the devised method can be clearly observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a geometric approach to fast array response adjustment with phase-only constraint. The devised algorithm can precisely and rapidly adjust the array response of a given point by only tuning the excitation phases of a preassigned weight vector. We geometrically reformulate the phase-only array response adjustment as a polygon construction problem, which can be solved by edge rotation in the complex plane. On this basis, we carry out a detailed analysis of the solution of polygon construction and specify the range of the feasible phase. To avoid the undesirable pattern distortion and obtain less pattern variations in the uncontrolled region, an effective and analytical phase determination approach is presented. The proposed algorithm provides an analytical solution and guarantees a precise phase-only adjustment without pattern distortion. In addition, our algorithm does not impose any restriction on the given weight vector and has a low computational complexity. Representative examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm under various situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to address grating-lobe clutter suppression in a uniform subarray (US) for the airborne radar system. Due to the sparsity at the subarray level and different scanning angles between the inner subarray and the subarray, grating lobes are produced. The grating-lobe clutter then enters the main lobe, defined as main grating-lobe clutter (MGLC). When the target falls into the MGLC with the same Doppler frequency, the clutter cannot be effectively suppressed by the conventional space-time adaptive processing (STAP) algorithm. Hence, we design a transmit beamforming (TB)-STAP algorithm based on a modified phased array (MPA) radar system, where TB suppresses the MGLC, while STAP suppresses the main-lobe and sidelobe clutter; the goal is to maximize the output signal-to-clutter-plus-noise ratio (SCNR). The optimal solution of TB-STAP can be obtained through several iterations, and in each iterative algorithm, the TB is a quadratically constrained quadratic problem (QCQP) solved via the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique, and the STAP can obtain a closed solution by the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) algorithm. The simulation results show that compared with traditional STAP in PA and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radars, the proposed algorithm in MPA radar greatly improves the output SCNR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present two array response control algorithms for pattern synthesis with the aid of oblique projection. The proposed algorithms are developed on the basis of the weight vector orthogonal decomposition (WORD) approach, and both of them can control the array responses of multiple points starting from an arbitrarily given weight vector. They provide closed-form expressions and thus are computationally attractive and convenient to implement. Furthermore, for the preassigned angles to be controlled, the array responses can be adjusted flexibly and separately, and hence, the process of response control can be readily accomplished without complete recalculation, if some of the desired levels require adjustments. In addition, the second proposed algorithm modifies the first one and realizes the array response control without a beam axis shift. By successively performing the proposed algorithms to adjust the response to meet certain requirements, the array pattern can be synthesized. Extensive examples are provided to demonstrate the performances of the proposed algorithms in array response control and the effectiveness in pattern synthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a flexible array response control algorithm via oblique projection, abbreviated as FARCOP, and its application to array pattern synthesis. The proposed FARCOP algorithm stems from the adaptive array theory, and it can flexibly, precisely and simultaneously adjust the array response levels at multiple angles based on an arbitrarily given weight vector. Different from the existing approaches, the proposed FARCOP algorithm controls multi-point responses by linearly transferring the given weight vector, with a transformation matrix containing a set of parameters, each of which can be very easily determined by the desired response level (at the control angle). Owing to the fact that those parameters are independent of each other, the response levels at the control angles can be either individually or jointly and, therefore, flexibly adjusted. Since the parameter phases can be arbitrary, we take the beampattern into account and propose to uniquely choose the optimal parameters under the typical criterion of maximum white noise gain (WNG). Accordingly, a gradient projection (GP) algorithm is devised to achieve the optimal solution. Moreover, a closed-form solution is derived for the centro-symmetric array. In addition, the application of the FARCOP algorithm to pattern synthesis is discussed. Comparing to the state-of-the-art methods like multi-point accurate array response control (${\text {MA}}^2{\text {RC}}$), the proposed FARCOP algorithm controls the array responses more flexibly with lower computational complexity. Representative examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the FARCOP algorithm under various situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel robust quasi-adaptive beamforming (RQAB) scheme against direction-of-arrival (DOA) mismatch. Unlike existing robust adaptive beamforming (RAB) methods, the proposed approach obtains the ultimate beamformer weight vector in a quiescent manner, nevertheless, it possesses the remarkable ability of interference rejection and desired signal reception. In this method, a two-step procedure is devised to design the quasi-adaptive weight vector. More specifically, the conventional sample matrix inversion (SMI) beamformer is first applied to find out all notch angles outside the region of interest (ROI) where the desired signal comes with a high probability. It is shown that these notch angles contain the DOAs of interferences. Then, a multipoint accurate array response control ( $ {\text {MA}}^2\text {RC}$ ) algorithm is utilized to synthesize a beampattern with the same sidelobe notch levels as the SMI, and nearly constant response over the ROI. Contrary to conventional approaches that are vulnerable to the contamination of the training data by the desired signal, our proposed approach exhibits outstanding performance under this common scenario. Moreover, besides the DOA mismatch, the proposed approach is also insensitive to the SNR, number of snapshots and mismatch angle. Additionally, different from many optimization-based RAB methods, the proposed RQAB approach offers an analytical expression of the beamformer weight vector and, hence, is computationally attractive. Typical simulation examples are provided to demonstrate the superiority of the RQAB scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the problem of pattern synthesis with antenna arrays is addressed, and new approaches based on the recently developed accurate array response control ( \textrm A^2\textrm RC ) algorithm are presented. It is shown that the array weight vector obtained by the \textrm A^2\textrm RC algorithm to control the normalized response at a single direction in each step belongs to a specific set. Thus, an appropriate weight vector chosen from the intersection of weight vector sets corresponding to the desired responses at multiple directions is capable of simultaneously controlling those responses. This results in the so-called multipoint accurate array response control ( \textrm MA^2\textrm RC ) algorithm. Moreover, in order to avoid possible beam axis shift in pattern synthesis, a modified \textrm MA^2\textrm RC ( \textrm M^2\textrm A^2\textrm RC ) algorithm is proposed by imposing a derivative constraint on the direction of beam axis. Representative numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed \textrm MA^2\textrm RC and \textrm M^2\textrm A^2\textrm RC algorithms for multipoint responses control and pattern synthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel accurate array response control algorithm, abbreviated as \text A^2\text RC, and its application to array pattern synthesis. The proposed \text A^2\text RC algorithm deals with the problem of how to accurately control the array response at a given direction. Starting from the adaptive array theory, a deep analysis of the optimal weight vector is carried out. It is found that the normalized response at a given direction can be accurately adjusted to an arbitrary level, by means of making some simple modification to the initial weight vector. On this basis, all possible weight vectors, which have a specific form and can make the normalized response at the given direction equal to the prescribed value, are first figured out. Then, an effective approach to selecting the most appropriate one, which would cause the least pattern distortion, is devised. By applying the \text A^2\text RC algorithm, a new pattern synthesis approach for arbitrary arrays is developed. In this approach, the array pattern is adjusted in a point-by-point manner by successively modifying the weight vector. Contrary to the conventional approaches that assign artificial interferences in an ad hoc way, our approach is able to obtain the weight vector without iteratively determining the powers of the artificial interferences. Extensive simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the \text A^2\text RC algorithm in array response control and the effectiveness of this algorithm in pattern synthesis under various situations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The performance of high-frequency radars is known to suffer from transient interference and noise, such as cosmic noise, lightning, meteor echoes, man-made impulse bursts, etc. Traditional interference suppression methods need to detect the location of transient interferences before mitigating them, and they process the data of each range cell separately without exploiting the information of other range cells. On the other hand, the traditional methods cannot effectively suppress the weak transient interference and noise. In this letter, we propose a novel interference suppression method based on the supervised matrix completion. Unlike the traditional methods, the proposed method does not require the interference detection step and can use the prior information from other range cells. The proposed algorithm can suppress not only the interferences, including the strong and weak ones, but also the noise. Processing results of real data have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A robust transmit beampattern matching synthesis approach is described for a multiple‐input and multiple‐output radar with manifold vectors perturbation. This synthesis technique minimises the worst‐case matching performance between the transmit beampattern and the desired beampattern (in a least absolute deviations sense), through designing the waveform covariance matrix. Also, the resulting minimax problem can be translated into a convex problem is showed. Finally, simulation results verify good performance of the proposed robust transmit beampattern synthesis approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here a novel mainlobe interference suppression technique based on eigenprojection algorithm and beam pattern similarity constraints is proposed. This method can effectively suppress the multiple mainlobe interferences and sidelobe interferences. The output of adaptive beamforming is calculated via adaptive weight vector obtained by the convex objective function and processed echo data based on the eigenprojection matrix. The simulations have been presented to evaluate the theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]