Detection Performance of Distributed MIMO Radar with Asynchronous Propagation and Timing/Phase Errors

Distributed multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar has received significant interest in recent years. However, most prior works assume orthogonal transmit waveforms, which can be perfectly separated at the receiver using a set of waveform-specific matched filters. With widely separated antennas, the waveforms often arrive at the receiver at different times, losing their orthogonality. The problem becomes worse when timing/phase errors are present. In this paper, we examine target detection in distributed MIMO radar with synchronization errors. A general signal model is developed that takes into account asynchronous propagation and possible timing/phase synchronization errors in distributed MIMO radar. Two sets of linear frequency modulation (LFM) based waveforms with different characteristics, along with coherent and non-coherent detectors, are employed to examine the impact of asynchronous propagation and synchronization errors on target detection. Simulation results are provided to compare the target detection performance of these detectors under different scenarios. Our results show that while the coherent detector is in general sensitive to synchronization errors, the non-coherent detector may benefit from the cross interference among the transmit waveforms, which makes it less sensitive to synchronization errors, in particular for highly correlated waveforms.