Performance of MIMO FMCW Radar in Detecting Small Vessels

Abstract

This paper evaluated the performance of range detection of a MIMO FMCW radar system detecting small vessels in maritime environments, through numerical simulations. The targets were modeled as Swerling1 targets, which resemble target with slow-changing radar cross sections (RCS). A MIMO FMCW system utilizing two transmitting antennas emitting two FMCW signals in different frequency bands, and two receiving antennas for MIMO processing-is proposed. In the MIMO scheme, a waveform design comprises of two subbands with an interval band, is suggested to avoid co-band interference between the two signals emitted from two transmitting antennas. At the receiver, the receiving signals were combined by means of spectrum averaging, before implementation of peak detection to estimate the target range. The performance of the proposed system is observed in terms of probability of range error, simulated over a range of signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). Simulation results indicated that MIMO processing yields approximately 3 dB improvements of probability of range error against SNR, compared to SISO case observed at 20% range error probability. In addition, the effects of interval band deployment on the quality of beat frequency was also discussed.

A small vessel detection using a co-located multi-frequency FMCW MIMO radar

“…A multi-frequency approach was adopted to evaluate the proposed MIMO configuration for maritime target detection with interval band and SA scheme as per [19], through utilising a Monte Carlo simulation [20], [21]. The proposed transmitting signal is illustrated in Figure 1.…”

“…Most of the multi-frequency researches were done with regards to utilisation of antenna array [15], [16], [18]. Reference [19] discussed the improvement brought by MIMO compared to the SISO configuration in detecting a small static vessel. A more extensive nodes configuration yields better target estimation and reduces range estimation error [19].…”

“…Reference [19] discussed the improvement brought by MIMO compared to the SISO configuration in detecting a small static vessel. A more extensive nodes configuration yields better target estimation and reduces range estimation error [19]. This paper presents a numerical simulation of a 2×2 MIMO radar which comprises two FMCW triangular waveform nodes applying a multi-frequency approach, in detecting a slow-fluctuating RCS static and doppler target.…”

Intermediate frequency variation in long‐range FMCW radar for harmonics cancellation

“…The simulations in this section were conducted with a simulation environment that runs in the python programming language. Similar simulators were used in the past for evaluating radar system performance such as [10] for very simple ranging applications or [11] for phased arrays and MIMO radars; however, there are many different implementation methods that differ in key characteristics.…”