MIMO radar waveform design using interleaved-OFDM technique

Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) radar waveform design using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals is adapted from communication system. It can provide an excellent orthogonality that is required by MIMO radar transmitter. Another privilege of using OFDM signal is the flexibility in subcarrier allocation when multiple MIMO radar user is considered. This paper analyzed about the comparison of radar detection accuracy, and resolution of four OFDM MIMO radar waveforms, i.e. Conventional OFDM-MIMO radar waveform, and three types of interleaved technique which are different in the way of allocating the subcarrier frequency when multi user scenario is concerned. Interleaved OFDM waveforms that will be compared here are the model introduced by Wiesbeck et al, Yoke et al, and random subcarrier interleaving. The transmitted OFDM signal is designed in such a way that the multiple transmitters will only radiate at the unique subcarriers. In this paper, MUSIC algorithm is used to obtain the target angle of arrival (AoA) information and virtual array is applied to improve radar ability in multi targets detection that usually limited by the number of receiver antennas. Radar performance comparison will be discussed in terms of the target range, velocity and the AoA resolution, including their accuracy and sidelobe levels.