Antenna selection for MIMO radar transmitters

Radar systems with widely separated transmitters and receivers offer advantages of spatial diversity as incoming echos can be observed originating through diverse aspect angles. This can be utilized to improve the overall sensitivity and performance of radar systems. This work introduces low-complexity antenna selection for MIMO radar systems where only a few of the available transmit antennas are selected. The antenna selection is carried out by making use of statistical radar information such as transmit antenna correlation and line-of-sight (LOS) reflectivity levels. The scheme is designed to ensure that the total available energy is only spread across the most viable antennas with independent diversity branches and strong LOS reflectors. Simulations are used to demonstrate that the use of statistical information and antenna selection can yield good performance compared to an all antenna system in many scenarios.