MIMO-RSFT radar: A reduced complexity MIMO radar based on the Sparse Fourier Transform

Despite their advantages, MIMO radars have not seen a massive deployment. One of the main limitations of the MIMO radar is its implementation cost, stemming from the large number of transmit and receive radio frequency channels, and the high data throughput that results in costly digital signal processing (DSP). This paper proposes MIMO-RSFT radar, a MIMO radar which employs the Realistic Sparse Fourier transform (RSFT) and achieves reduced DSP complexity. Slow-time and fast-time coded waveforms are investigated in the context of the MIMO-RSFT radar. The key steps of deriving the optimal detection thresholds for the MIMO-RSFT radar in 3-D are provided, and the feasibility of the MIMO-RSFT radar is demonstrated via simulations.