Localization in MIMO Radar with Widely Separated Antennas: Performance Study

In this paper, a fundamental investigation on the performance of localization problem in a distributed multiple-input multiple-output radar system using bistatic range (BR) and angle of arrival (AOA) measurements is conducted. The study is based on the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for the target position under Gaussian measurement noise. We attempt to approximately compute the CRLB separately in the cases of BR-only and joint BRlAOA localization schemes and determine which factors can affect the CRLB values. The three factors the transmitter/receiver placement, the number of transmitters and receivers, and noise power levels are shown to be effective on the localization performance. Numerical simulations are included to support and corroborate the theoretical developments.