Moving Target Detection Using Fast Iterative Interpolated Beamforming for Distributed MIMO Radar in Non-Homogeneous Clutter

In this paper, the problem of moving target detection (MTD) in distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar in non-homogeneous environments is addressed. The MTD is performed in the Doppler domain and the received signal disturbance is modeled using a linear combination of multiple discrete clutter scatterers whose Doppler frequencies and powers vary from one range bin to another and from one transmit- receive pair to another. We develop a computationally efficient algorithm for MTD using fast iterative interpolated beamforming (FIIB) techniques. Unlike existing MTD techniques which apply orthogonal projections to eliminate powerful clutter discretes from the cell under test, the proposed method mitigates the clutter in the frequency domain via spectral leakage elimination. The computational complexity of the proposed method is shown to be linearly proportional to the computational complexity of the fast Fourier transform, the number of iterations of the FIIB algorithm, and the number of discrete clutter components. It is also shown that the detection performance of the proposed method is similar to that of orthogonal projection based techniques, at a reduced computational cost. Simulation examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.