Ambiguity Optimization for Frequency-Hopping Waveforms in MIMO Radars With Arbitrary Antenna Separations

Ambiguity functions are important design tools that characterize the response of radar detectors to mismatched targets. Recently, the authors proposed a new definition of the ambiguity function for radars that perform non-coherent processing. In this paper, this new ambiguity function definition is utilized to optimize frequency hopping waveforms for MIMO radars with arbitrary antenna separations. To this end, ambiguity function expressions for a general MIMO radar with arbitrary antenna separation are derived, and further simplified for frequency-hopping waveforms. Next, a scalar cost function is proposed that expresses the desirability of the ambiguity function associated with any frequency-hopping waveform. Simulation results demonstrate that this cost function can be optimized via heuristic optimization techniques to yield improvements in ambiguity performance.

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