Compressive Sensing for Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Using an Electronically Steered Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Array

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signal processing on large radar sensor arrays can be accomplished by using orthogonality in the time domain with time division multiplexing (TDM), where only one transmit antenna element is active per time slot. In this contribution, the MIMO-TDM system is compared to transmitter-side electronic beamsteering in azimuth direction - for the case that a MIMO array is used and direction of arrival estimation is done via compressive sensing techniques. It can be shown that the angular resolution can be enhanced compared to conventional MIMO-TDM processing thanks to additional degrees of freedom provided by transmitter-side beamforming (BF), using the same number of physical antenna elements.