Abstract:

Conventional waveform design methods for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radars are sensitive to transport matrix errors, so the optimal matchedwaveform is hard to achieve, and the detection performance degrades dramatically. To mitigate this problem, a novel robust waveform design method is introduced for MIMO radars based on probabilistic constraint. In this method, the probability of the worst case is considered very small. Therefore, the probability of the output signal noise ratio (SNR) less than the acceptable level is constrained no more than the outage probability, and the optimal waveforms are designed to maximize the output SNR. Using the characters of statistical distribution of transport matrix errors, the probabilistic constraint is transformed to a deterministic convex constraint. So the statistical optimization problem is converted to a convex optimization problem. This method maximizes the performance with high probability under transport matrix errors. The simulation results show that the method increases the output SNR and detection performance.