Experimental demonstration of distributed MIMO imaging

Inhalt:
This paper reports on simulation and experimental research into sparse, distributed MIMO radar imaging. In contrast to colocated MIMO where the virtual array is equispaced (Nyquist sampled), this paper focuses on sparse arrays with a low number of randomly distributed antenna elements spanning a relative large aperture. It is shown through simulation at X-band that the random element placement successfully prevents grating lobes, but comes at the expense of increases sidelobe levels. In the experimental results, conducted at W-band, a trihedral target is imaged using four transmit and four receive elements spanning a 1.2 m aperture. The downrange resolution is 14 cm and the cross-range resolution just 9 mm. However, the mean sidelobe level is -6 dB with peak sidelobe level at -3 dB.