Direction Blanking with Controllable Width in MIMO Radar via Phase Code Optimization

In this article, we consider the problem of creating null-energy directions of controllable width with a MIMO radar, for surveillance applications where the energy radiated should be uniformly spread over the remaining angular directions. In a MIMO radar, the antenna beam pattern can be modified by a judicious choice of the transmitted waveforms. We restrict our attention here to phase code waveforms. We first propose an optimization program that enables to minimize the energy in a given narrow direction while uniformly spreading the energy over the other directions. Then we propose to extend this solution to create larger null angular intervals. Interestingly the proposed solution involves the well-known Discrete Prolate Spheroidal Sequences [1]. We show on simulations the efficiency of the proposed approach.