Receiver Design for Range and Doppler Sidelobe Suppression Using MIMO and Phased-Array Radar

This paper investigates the receiver instrumental variable (IV) filter design for sidelobe suppression using multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) and phased-array radar. First, we analyze the performance of existing integrated sidelobe level (ISL) and the zero sidelobe (ZS) methods for range sidelobe suppression, and show the latter's superiority. The limitation of MIMO radar sidelobe suppression in a large number of range bins is discussed. It is shown that the phased-array radar avoids this limitation. Then we consider joint range and Doppler sidelobe suppression, and the solutions for both MIMO and phased-array radar are derived, classified, and analyzed. The conclusions are drawn through performance trade-off. The use of phased-array radar compromises the waveform diversity of MIMO radar. However, with the objective of range, and joint range and Doppler sidelobe suppression, phased-array radar has better performance in terms of computational complexity, sidelobe suppression level and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) loss. This will relieve the design workload for large scale radar systems. In addition, we show via simulations that the bounds of clear area of matched filter output (ambiguity function) are inapplicable for the IV filter design.