Joint allocation of transmit-receive resource for MIMO-STAP

Aiming to address the issue of target detection performance degradation due to limited resources of airborne multiple-in multiple-out (MIMO) radar, a joint allocation method of transmit-receive spatial-temporal resources is developed to ameliorate the detection performance of MIMO radar-based space-time adaptive processing (STAP). A MIMO-STAP model containing space-time resources to be configured is firstly constructed. Then, with the criterion of maximizing the output signal-to-clutter-noise ratio (SCNR), a problem to jointly design the transmitting and receiving elements, transmitting pulses, baseband waveform, and receiving weight is formulated. To tackle the resultant complex nonlinear joint optimization issue, it is decomposed into four independent sub-problems based on the alternating iteration strategy, then the sub-problems are efficiently solved by corresponding optimization techniques, i.e., the optimal antenna pulse subset can be selected by employing the sequential convex approximation (SCA) method, the transmitting waveform is optimized using the semi-positive definite program (SDP) and randomization method, and the receiving weight is designed under the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) criteria, which work iteratively to achieve an effective solution to the joint optimization problem. Extensive simulation results verify the effectiveness of the developed algorithm.