Radar Wave Based Positioning of Spatially Distributed MIMO Radar Antenna Systems for Near-Field Nondestructive Testing

Spatially distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar systems offer an advantage in locating and characterizing targets compared to individual MIMO radar. In such systems, precise antenna positioning is crucial for their imaging performance. This letter presents a method for antenna position estimation based on radar wave propagation between the antennas. The antenna positions are calculated based on a multilateration algorithm and further optimized by using Levenberg-Marquardt method and singular value decomposition. Ranging and positioning performances obtained with a 15-GHz stepped frequency MIMO radar are described and evaluated. Finally, measurement results from a test object illustrate the performance of the proposed method for near-field nondestructive targets testing.