Non-cooperative Bistatic Denial with EPC-MIMO Radar Transmitter

It is critically important for the advanced surveillance system to prevent its high-power illuminator from being utilized by the non-cooperative receiver. In this paper, a non-cooperative bistatic denial method based on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar transmitter with element-pulse coding (EPC) technology is proposed. Firstly, it is revealed that EPC-MIMO transmitted signals exhibit spatial anisotropy and pulse-varying characteristics, resulting in a deliberate mismatch between the target echo and direct-path signal received by the non-cooperative receiver. Then, the analytical expression for the range-Doppler output of the non-cooperative receiver is derived, demonstrating that the EPC phase modulation induces substantial pulse loss after pulse compression and generates multiple split targets in the Doppler domain after pulse coherent accumulation. Consequently, the target detection capability of the non-cooperative receiver is severely deteriorated. Furthermore, the impact of the EPC coefficient on the SNR degradation of the true target and the number of split targets is quantitatively analyzed, and an optimized EPC coefficient design scheme is proposed to ensure optimal non-cooperative bistatic denial performance. Both theoretical derivations and simulation experiments validate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed EPC-MIMO transmitter scheme.