Transmit policies for MIMO radar detection and time-delay estimation

This paper is aimed at investigating the role of Space-Time Coding (STC) for target detection and time-delay estimation through MIMO radars with widely spaced antennas. To this end we formulate the waveform optimization problem as a constrained maximization of some detection-oriented figures of merit under an accuracy constraint. Interestingly, such an additional constraint deeply modifies the optimal transmit policy. We also offer closed-form formulas of the Fisher Information in target delay estimation as a function of the singular values of the code matrix. Numerical results validating the theoretical findings are also given.