Angle Estimation for Bistatic MIMO Radar with Prior Range-Sum Information

In this paper, a novel direction-of-departure (DOD) and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation method is proposed for bistatic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar with prior range-sum information. In traditional bistatic MIMO radar angle estimation, the estimation of DOA and DOD is identified through two-dimensional (2D) searching. Different from the traditional methods, the angle information of target is estimated with prior knowledge of the transmitter-target-receiver range-sum, which improves the estimation accuracy. The relationship between DOD and DOA is derived by using the range-sum information. Consequently, once the corresponding range-sum of target is identified, the corresponding mapping relationship between DOD and DOA is obtained. In this case, 2D searching procedure is not required anymore resulting in greatly reducing the computational complexity. The Cramer Rao bound of the proposed signal model is derived to prove that the lower limit of angle estimation accuracy is lower than that of the traditional signal model. The robustness and effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated via simulation results.