Coherent FDA Radar: Transmitter and Receiver Design and Analysis

The combination of frequency diverse array (FDA) radar technology with multiple input multiple output (MIMO) radar architecture and waveform diversity techniques potentially promises a high integration gain with respect to conventional phased array (PA) radars. In this paper, we propose an approach to the design of the transmitter and receiver of a coherent FDA (C-FDA) radar, that enables it to perform the demodulation with spectral overlapping, due to the small frequency offsets. To this purpose, we derive the generalized space-time-range signal model and prove that the proposed C-FDA radar has a higher coherent array gain than a PA radar, and at the same time, it effectively resolves the secondary range-ambiguous (SRA) problem in FDA-MIMO radar, allowing for mainlobe interference suppression and range-ambiguous clutter suppression. Numerical results prove the effectiveness of the proposed C-FDA radar in terms of anti-interference and anti-clutter capabilities over conventional radars.