Distributed Radar Multi-frame Detection with Least Squares Quantization

In a distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar system, multiple-frame local observations can be transmitted to a fusion center (FC) for a better detection performance, but the communication cost may be huge. In this paper, we study how to impose the least squares quantization (LSQ) method on distributed multi-frame detection (MFD). Local test statistics instead of raw signals are quantized by the LSQ algorithm and then a decision rule is formulated based on the dynamic-programming based MFD algorithm. Numerical results indicate that the LSQ algorithm causes an insignificant detection performance loss at three-bit LSQ quantization. Meanwhile, this method greatly reduces the computational complexity and the communications bandwidth costs.