Diversity Gain for MIMO Neyman–Pearson Signal Detection

For a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system adopting the Neyman-Pearson (NP) criterion, we initially derive the diversity gain for a signal-present versus signal-absent scalar hypothesis test statistic and also for a vector signal-present versus signal-absent hypothesis testing problem. For a MIMO radar system with M transmit and N receive antennas, used to detect a target composed of Q random scatterers with possibly non-Gaussian reflection coefficients in the presence of possibly non-Gaussian clutter-plus-noise, we consider a class of test statistics, including the optimum test for Gaussian reflection coefficients and Gaussian clutter-plus-noise, and apply the previously developed results to compute the diversity gain. It is found that the diversity gain for the MIMO radar system is dependent on the cumulative distribution function (cdf) of the reflection coefficients while being invariant to the cdf of the clutter-plus-noise under some reasonable conditions requiring certain moments of the magnitude of the processed clutter-plus-noise be bounded. If the noise-free received waveforms, due to target reflection, at each receiver span a space of dimension M' ≤ M, the largest possible diversity gain is controlled by the value of min(NM', Q ) and the lowest order power in an expansion, about zero, of the cdf of the magnitude squared of a linear transformed version of the reflection coefficient vector. It is shown that the maximum possible diversity gain in any given scenario can be achieved without employing orthogonal waveforms.