Target Localization in Asynchronous Distributed MIMO Radar Systems With a Cooperative Target

In general, target localization in distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar systems requires synchronization among the sensors, which may not be feasible when the sensors are widely separated. In this paper, the target localization problem is addressed under asynchronous distributed MIMO radar systems in the presence of clock and frequency offsets with the aid of a cooperative target, whose position and velocity are known with measurement errors. Specifically, the influence of the cooperative target position and velocity errors on the unknown target localization accuracy is analyzed through the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) derivation firstly. Then two methods, namely, the offset estimation based localization method and the offset elimination based localization method, are proposed to estimate the unknown target location. The former estimates the clock and frequency offsets firstly and then locates the unknown target based on the offset estimates, and the latter achieves the unknown target location estimate based on the differential measurements of the two targets. Through the theoretical derivation and numerical simulations, the two proposed methods are demonstrated to be approximately unbiased and can attain the CRLB under mild noise. Moreover, the simulation results show that the proposed methods enjoy higher localization accuracy than the state-of-the-art algorithms.