Improvement of Airborne Early Warning Radar-Application by MIMO Radar

电子科技大学 格拉斯哥学院 2017级 彭淳熙

Improvement of Airborne Early Warning Radar-Application by MIMO Radar

Abstract: Airborne early warning radar is a radar control system device mounted on early warning aircraft, which is used to search, monitor and track air and sea targets, and to command and guide our aircraft to perform combat tasks. This paper will analyse how to use MIMO radar to improve the accuracy of airborne early warning radar.

Key words: MIMO radar waveform diversity

Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO)radar is a new system of radar, which combines multiple input and multiple output technologies in wireless communication system with digital array technology. Previously, airborne early warning radar mostly used meter-wave radar. Although this kind of radar has a long measuring distance, its accuracy is not high. So using the MIMO radar to take the place of it can be an outstanding idea.

The working mode of the MIMO radar is flexible. Phased array radar realizes spatial power synthesis of transmitted signal by controlling the phase of transmitted signal. MIMO radar can control the transmission signal waveform of multiple transmission channels, and it has more controllable degrees of freedom. MIMO radar can transmit the same signal waveform as phased array radar, forming a narrow transmitting beam; it can also transmit completely orthogonal signal waveform to form a full-space and omnidirectional transmitting pattern; it can also transmit related signal waveform according to the requirements, forming simultaneous multi-direction transmission or broadening assignment. Shape and direction. Narrow beam transmission can be used for single target tracking, omni-directional or wide beam transmission can be used for target search, and multi-directional transmission can be used for multi-target simultaneous tracking. The prominent advantage of this method is that it can solve the contradiction between time and energy resources by synthetically utilizing transmitting waveforms. It has broad application prospects in multi-function radar. At the same time, it has a high accuracy of angle measurement. According to the first processing flow of MIMO radar, the virtual antenna aperture can be obtained by waveform diversity, and the antenna aperture can be expanded to improve the angular measurement accuracy. Its essence is that MIMO radar can use both transmitting and receiving antennas for angle measurement, while traditional phased array radar can only use antenna receiving end for angle measurement. Its accuracy is only related to receiving antenna aperture, so the definition of aperture expansion should be the ratio of virtual antenna aperture to receiving antenna aperture minus 1.

In the case of limited antenna aperture, it is a effective choice to use the MIMO radar to improve the accuracy of angle measurement.

Reference：Sandeep Rao. (2017). MIMO Radar. Available: http://www.ti.com/lit/an/swra554a/swra554a.pdf. Last accessed 28th Nov 2018.