Computationally Efficient Bistatic MIMO Radar Signal Processing Architecture Based on Coupling of Range and Direction

Since targets located in the same direction of arrival (DOA) have different directions of departure (DOD), the computation burden of signal processing in bistatic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar is huge. In this paper, a novel computationally efficient signal processing architecture is proposed for bistatic MIMO radar by exploiting the coupling of range and direction (CRD) property. In the proposed architecture, the echo signals of the targets located in the same DOA are processed first using the same space-time matched filter (STMF) without considering the DOD difference. Due to the CRD, the echo signals can be matched efficiently, but the locations of the targets deviate from their true values in the processing result. Then, through analyzing the CRD thoroughly, an iterative method is proposed to rectify the deviation and the targets' real location can be obtained accordingly. Since the echo signals of the targets located in the same DOA can be processed effectively with the same STMF, the proposed architecture is more efficient in computation than the conventional one. The convergence property of the proposed iterative method is guaranteed theoretically, and the effectiveness of the new signal processing architecture is verified through numerical experiments.