Adaptive phase-array calibration using MIMO radar clutter

The goal of this paper is to develop methods for determining the calibrated array weights for uniform linear transmit and receive radar arrays necessary to achieve desired uniform sidelobe performance. The ability of current radar systems to suppress sidelobe clutter and interference is seriously limited by miscalibration of antenna array gain and phase due to non-ideal antenna and near-field scattering characteristics, both at the receive and transmit phased-arrays. At best, current calibration methods perform only receive array calibration using a limited number of discrete sources. The objective of this paper is to perform joint transmit and receive array calibration using ground backscatter returns from MIMO radar illumination.