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Phase Synchronization for Coherent MIMO Radar: Algorithms and Their

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5538
Phase Synchronization for Coherent MIMO Radar:
Algorithms and Their Analysis
Yang Yang and Rick S. Blum, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar can
achieve improved localization performance by employing a co-
herent processing approach with proper antenna positioning.
Coherent processing, however, entails the challenge of ensuring
phase coherence of the carrier signals from different distributed
radar elements. In this work, we aim to address such a challenge
by providing a systematic treatment of the phase synchronization
problem in coherent MIMO radar systems. We propose and study
three different approaches for reaching a common notion of phase
in coherent MIMO radar, namely, the master-slave closed-loop
algorithm, the round-trip algorithm and the broadcast consensus
based algorithm. These algorithms range from centralized to
distributed types, and include both noniterative and iterative
approaches. They do not require a priori establishment of the time
synchronization, and thus are all time asynchronous in nature.
Under a similar analytical framework, we mathematically charac-
terize each of these algorithms, and further derive and study the
statistical properties of a few relevant figures of merit including
the resulting phase synchronization error. Simulation results are
presented to validate our theoretical analysis.
Index Terms—Coherent processing, multiple-input mul-
tiple-output (MIMO) radar, phase synchronization.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE last few years have seen a great surge of interest and
progress in understanding the concept of multiple-input
multiple-output (MIMO) radar and developing paradigms
to assess its potential and actual effectiveness. For all cases
where the MIMO radar antennas are not colocated, the delays
from a given transmit antenna to a given receive antenna
change significantly as we change the transmit and/or receive
antenna involved. Among all these noncolocated cases are two
cases that have received special attention: one called coherent
MIMO radar and one called noncoerent MIMO radar [1]. The
distinguishing feature is whether the antennas are spaced to
Manuscript received January 21, 2011; revised May 24, 2011; accepted July
11, 2011. Date of publication July 22, 2011; date of current version October 12,
2011. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and ap-
proving it for publication was Prof. Visa Koivunen. This work was supported
by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command under contract number
W9113M-08-C-0221 to ANDRO Computational Solutions, LLC, who in turn,
sponsored a subcontract to Syracuse University. The U.S. Government is autho-
rized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwith-
standing any copyright notation thereon. The views and conclusions contained
herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily rep-
resenting the official polices or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of
the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, ANDRO Computational
Solutions, LLC, Syracuse University or the U.S. Government.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015 USA (e-mail: yay204@lehigh.edu;
rblum@ece.lehigh.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSP.2011.2162509
1053-587X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011
fit within a given target beamwidth. For the case of coherent
MIMO radar, the antennas are within a given target beamwidth,
and this leads to identical reflection coefficients. The optimum
processing of the coherent MIMO radar returns has been
shown to give excellent performance in some very important
cases, such target localization [2], [3], but it requires phase
synchronization between the separated antenna elements1. In
fact, phase synchronization embodies a major difference be-
tween the operations of noncoherent MIMO radar and coherent
MIMO radar, as will be mathematically demonstrated later
in this work. Unfortunately, in reality, the radar elements are
usually operated with physically different local oscillators, and
each of them suffers from statistically independent phase offset,
indicating that the phase of the carrier signal transmitted gets
rotated by an unknown amount. As a consequence, practical
implementation of coherent MIMO radar entails the challenge
of ensuring phase coherence of the carrier signals from different
distributed radar elements.
The imperfection in phase synchronization that would in-
evitably occur in coherent MIMO radar, on the other hand,
has recently attracted the attention of some researchers. For
example, some theoretical analysis conducted on coherent
MIMO radar has taken into account the phase synchronization
error or mismatch, such as [4]–[7]. However, the technical
feasibility of phase coherence in coherent MIMO radar as well
as approaches for achieving such phase coherence has received
very little attention. Moreover, although the synchronization
problem has been intensely studied in several closely related
contexts, for example, in traditional radar systems (see, e.g.,
[8]–[14]) and in wireless networks including sensor networks
(see, e.g., [15]–[22]), we have not seen much work that is
specifically targeted at attaining phase coherence, or phase
synchronization in coherent MIMO radar. Without doubt, this
line of work, which addresses the challenge that is inherent
to coherent MIMO radar, is of both practical and theoretical
importance, and merits interest on its own terms.
As a result, a systemic treatment of the phase synchroniza-
tion problem in coherent MIMO radar becomes the primary
objective of our study, which, is also a major contribution of
our work. As far as the novelty of our work goes, the very
few efforts to date to this problem has made ours the first of
its kind, according to our best knowledge. More specifically,
in our work, we propose and discuss three different yet ef-
ficient approaches to achieve phase coherence in coherent
MIMO radar, namely, the master-slave closed-loop algorithm,
the round-trip algorithm and the broadcast consensus based
algorithm. These phase synchronization algorithms range from
1In this paper, we use the terms sensor, node, and element interchangely.
YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR
centralized to distributed types, and include both noniterative
and iterative methods. They are versatile and practically imple-
mentable, and should cater to different needs arising as a result
of different number of MIMO radar elements, different sensor
placements, as well as different operational preferences. They
are all time asynchronous algorithms, and do not require the
establishment of time synchronization in advance. In particular,
the master-slave closed-loop algorithm and the round-trip algo-
rithm also require no a priori frequency synchronization. Under
a similar analytical framework, for each of these algorithms, we
derive and also provide an analysis of the statistical properties
of some interesting figures of merit, such as the aggregate
phase error after synchronization and the phase deviation from
consensus. Our analysis clearly reveals the impact of the phase
and frequency estimation errors on the phase synchronization
accuracy.
Of particular note is that while each of these phase syn-
chronization algorithms may resemble some algorithm(s) in
existing works that are designed for or applied to situations
other than phase synchronization in coherent MIMO radar,
they do contain distinct features and contributions when in
comparison. For example, [11] proposes a broadcast reference
self-cohering technique for calibrating a large, sparse, flexing
array that has a similar physical setup as the coherent MIMO
radar system. This technique directly broadcasts phase refer-
ence signals from a reference element to other array elements,
which resembles our master-slave closed-loop algorithm. It,
however, requires several auxiliary beacons with either accu-
rately known or loosely known locations to provide additional
phase measurements. Note that none of our proposed methods
requires auxiliary beacons or alike. Another approach, similar
to our master-slave closed-loop algorithm, has been used in
[18] to synchronize the carrier phase of a group of nodes,
but [18] implicitly assumes the a priori establishment of time
synchronization. In contrast, our work does not assume either
time nor frequency synchronization, and features an asyn-
chronous time model and timing analysis. The round-trip type
method proposed in [19]–[22] for global clock synchronization
in sensor networks or carrier synchronization for distributed
beamforming share the same essential features as our round-trip
algorithm, but in general they cannot be applied to our problem
in a straightforward manner. Besides, in our work, we provide
a thorough analysis of the resulting phase synchronization error
at each radar element, which is not available in these works.
Finally, the application of broadcast-based consensus algorithm
to phase synchronization and the analysis of its convergence
behavior in the presence of nonzero-mean phase perturbations,
is an extension of our work in [38], and is new on its own.
Therefore, each algorithm proposed in our work represents a
unique addition to their respective category of methods. Overall,
our work, providing a practical orientation along with a theoret-
ical depth, is a first attempt to explicitly address practical issues
related to phase synchronization in coherent MIMO radar. It is
also worth noting that in our work, we only consider space as
the transmission medium through which phase synchronization
is implemented, but we note that these synchronization algo-
rithms can remain effective when phase synchronization is to
be achieved across different radar elements through wired con-
5539
nections, such as coaxial cable or fiber optic links. For example,
the broadcast consensus based phase synchronization algorithm
given in this paper is applicable to other types of media than the
wireless environment, as long as broadcast is enabled. Addition-
ally, we assume sensors operate in the half-duplex mode, which
means that they cannot receive while they are transmitting.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section II, we give a brief introduction to the coherent MIMO
radar model, demonstrate the difference between coherent and
noncoherent processing for target localization, and most im-
portantly, elucidate the motivation of our work. In Section III,
we describe a simple master-slave closed-loop phase synchro-
nization approach, and examine the statistical properties of the
cumulative phase error. In Section IV, we propose a round-trip
phase synchronization algorithm, and analyze the phase syn-
chronization error. In Section V, we propose a broadcast
consensus based phase synchronization algorithm, and study
some convergence properties of this algorithm. In Section VI,
we summarize and compare these three phase synchronization
algorithms, and discuss some issues that may arise in practice.
In Section VII, we provide some simulation results on the
broadcast consensus based algorithm. In Section VIII, we end
this paper with some concluding remarks.
II. COHERENT MIMO RADAR MODEL
In this section, we provide a concise description of the co-
herent MIMO radar model, and illustrate the difference between
coherent and noncoherent processing in the context of target
localization. Note that to make the discussion very clear, we
consider here some simplified assumptions. Let us consider a
MIMO radar that is equipped with transmitters and re-
ceivers. Thus, the total number of radar elements is ,
and for notational convenience we denote . The
positions of the th, transmitter and the th,
receiver are and , respectively,
in a two-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. The lowpass
equivalent of the signal transmitted from the th transmitter is
, where denotes the total transmitted energy, and
the waveform is normalized such that
Assume the target’s location and velocity are and ,
respectively. For notational convenience, we define a parameter
vector as follows:
In the coherent mode, the antennas are assumed to be all
within the effective beamwidth of the target, if the target is
modeled as an antenna [1]. Thus, the reflection coefficient is
assumed to be the same for each th path, and is denoted as
. We assume is unknown but deterministic2. Then, the signal
2Considering random leads to very similar results but the deterministic case
simplifies the analysis.
5540 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011

emanated from transmitter and captured by receiver can be As the noise components are i.i.d. Gaussian, the log-likelihood
expressed as function of the received signal vector, after simplification, can
be expressed as
(1)

where is the carrier frequency of the probing signal; and

represent the time delay and Doppler shift, respectively, cor-
responding to the th path. In particular, the time delay
(3)
is a function of the unknown target location , i.e.
where and are constants independent of the parameters to
be estimated. Thus, the ML estimate of the deterministic but
unknown parameter vector using coherent
processing is given by [2]

where denotes the speed of light, the distance between the

target and the th transmitter, and the distance between the
target and the th receiver. The Doppler shift is a function of
the unknown target location and velocity , i.e.,
(4)

For the purpose of comparison, we also briefly describe the

noncoherent processing approach. In this mode, the antennas are
where denotes the wavelength of the carrier. In (1), de- assumed to be separated sufficiently so that each path observes
notes the noise-plus-clutter for the th path. For simplicity an independent aspect of the target. If we denote the reflection
of discussion, we assume is a temporally white, zero- coefficient corresponding to the th path as , then is
mean complex Gaussian random process. More specifically, we independent for different and/or . Further, we model as
have a zero-mean complex Gaussian random variable with variance
, i.e., . This is usually referred to as the
Swerling I model [24]. Then the signal emanated from trans-
mitter and captured by receiver can be expressed as
where is a constant and is a unit impulse function. Ad-
ditionally, to explain the concept of coherent processing in a
(5)
simple way, we assume elements of the noise-plus-clutter are
spatially white, i.e.,
The ML estimate of using noncoherent processing is given by
[23] [see (6) at the bottom of the page].
Comparing (4) and (6), it is clearly observed that when es-
Let be an vector which contains all the signals timating the unknown target parameters, the relative phase in-
received at the receive elements, i.e., formation at different antennas is utilized in the coherent pro-
cessing, which is in contrast to the noncoherent case. As a result,
implementation of coherent MIMO radar systems needs to cope
with the fundamental challenge of ensuring a common notion of
The scatter reflectivity can be estimated using the maximum phase among all the antennas, and calls for efficient algorithms
likelihood (ML) method, and we provide this result directly as which can lead to good performance in terms of phase coher-
follows ence. In the sequel, we propose and discuss three schemes of
this kind, and further provide some analysis on their accuracy.

III. MASTER-SLAVE CLOSED-LOOP PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION

We present in this section an intuitive yet very simple phase
synchronization scheme. This scheme employs a master-slave
(2) architecture as illustrated in Fig. 1, where we denote sensor

(6)
YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR
Fig. 1. Master-slave architecture.
as the master node, and , as slave nodes. All
the slave sensors will then synchronize their local phase with
that of the master node. Note that a similar master-slave archi-
tecture has been employed in [17] and [18] for the distributed
beamforming application. In particular, in [18], the authors also
used a master-slave based approach to synchronize the carriers
of a group of source nodes, but they implicitly assumed time
synchronization as given a priori. In contrast, here we assume
no a priori establishment of time synchronization across all the
radar elements, at least not one with sufficient accuracy to en-
able phase synchronization. Each radar element maintains its
own time using its own independent local oscillator, and is able
to track the elapsed time using its local clock with relative pre-
cision. As a result of the absence of a common time reference,
the instantaneous phase of each radar element can no longer be
precisely determined by the local time at that element. For sim-
plicity, we assume all the radar elements have a similar notion
of the length of a specified time interval, e.g., for a time slot.3
In practice, this can be achieved by using identical stable clocks
(e.g., atomic clocks) across all the radar elements. Moreover, we
also assume no a priori frequency synchronization among these
nodes. But we assume all the radar elements are equipped with
identical frequency and phase estimators.
Given this master-slave architecture, there exist two basic
variations, depending on how the master element interacts with
each of these slave elements. The first one is the open-loop ap-
proach, in which the master node broadcasts an unmodulated
sinusoidal reference signal to all the slave nodes, and each of
these slave nodes will then use such a reference signal to es-
timate and correct its phase offset. In this way, interaction be-
tween the master node and slave nodes is minimal. However, the
absence of a common time reference, as we pointed out earlier,
makes it difficult for each sensor to generate absolute phase with
respect to the true time. As a result, phase shift induced by the
channel between the master node and each slave node can not
be disambiguated at each slave node, and hence cannot be com-
pensated either. So, this open-loop method may lead to inferior
accuracy in phase synchronization. On the other hand, suppose
3Note that, nevertheless, this assumption can be relaxed, for discrepancies in
the actual lengths of the time interval at these radar elements will not affect
the final accuracy of our algorithms (as can be seen later from the analysis of
the phase synchronization error), though in some cases they can cause possible
transmission collisions during the phase synchronization process if is not well
chosen.
5541
the channel phase information can be measured in a certain way
and then fed back explicitly to each slave node for appropriate
phase compensation, the accuracy of phase synchronization can
be much improved. This is the basic idea behind the closed-loop
approach, another type of master-slave synchronization. How-
ever, a fundamental premise that lies underneath this approach is
the channel reciprocity, which is assumed in our work, meaning
that the channel between a pair of sensors remains the same for
both forward and reverse directions.
In the following, we describe a specific time-slotted closed-
loop phase synchronization algorithm. In particular, we assume
each slave element is assigned a specific time slot, during which
they can exchange information with the master element . We
further assume each slave element knows the number (or order)
of the time slot assigned to it. To this end, this time-slotted
closed-loop approach is summarized as follows.
1) The master element broadcasts an unmodulated beacon
signal to all the slave elements.
2) Upon receiving the beacon signal, each slave sensor per-
forms the following steps concurrently:
a) It estimates the frequency and phase of the received
signal.
b) It begins to count the elapsed time using its own local
clock, and waits for its time slot to come.
3) When the time slot for slave element starts according
to its local clock, the following steps will take place in a
sequential order:
a) passes the received beacon signal back to , using
the local phase and frequency estimates generated
from its observation.
b) Upon receiving the returned beacon signal from ,
estimates the received phase, and computes the
phase difference relative to the originally transmitted
reference signal. It divides the phase difference by
two, precompensates the phase offset, and then trans-
mits the beacon signal back to .
c) After receiving the reference signal, estimates
the phase information and adjusts its carrier phase
accordingly.
As is evident from the above procedures, it is essential to
estimate the pre-compensation phase offset for each slave
node when performing this closed-loop phase synchronization
scheme. But since the channel between the master node and
each slave node may vary from time to time, though at a
slow rate, the value of the pre-compensation offset has to be
estimated and updated in a periodic manner.
A. Protocol Timing Analysis
Since we assume no a priori time synchronization and as-
sume each slave element keeps its own local time using its own
independent oscillator, it is important to coordinate the trans-
missions of these slave sensors in order to minimize or avoid any
possible collisions. To facilitate the ensuing analysis, we model
the channel from the master element to each slave element
as a linear time-invariant (LTI) system with impulse response
. For simplicity, we focus on the single-path and time-in-
variant channels, i.e., , where
is a real number, and denotes the propagation delay for the
5542 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011

channel between and . Due to the channel reciprocity, we
have and thus .
Then as far as timing is concerned, we make the following
proposition:
Proposition 1: Each slave element , upon the conclusion
of receiving the beacon signal from the master element , (12)
needs to defer a period of time before it initiates its time slot
counting. The defer time, denoted as , should satisfy the
following condition:
Note that Proposition 1 can make sure that each slave node
will not confuse the initial beacon signal sent by with the
bounced signal from any other slave node. Further, the length of
the time slot needs to be judiciously designed, so that slave ele-
ments will not interfere with each other when they interact with
the master element. We assume that before the defer time ex-
pires at each slave node, each slave node has successfully gener-
ated estimates of the frequency and phase of its received signal.
We also assume the processing time at the master element is
. Then, we make the following proposition with regard to the
length of the time slot.
Proposition 2: The duration of a time slot, , should satisfy
the following condition:
(7)
Proof: Suppose slave sensor and are scheduled to
transmit in two adjacent time slots. Let sensor be the first one
to transmit and its time slot number be , where
. Let us use the instant when the master element broadcasts
the beacon signal as the time reference point. Then the ending
time of ’s time slot is
Combing (8) and (9), we have
(10)
(11)
(13)
where in both (11) and (13), we apply the fact that and
.
Remark 1: Of note is that this algorithm is also applicable
to cases where the communication channels are multipath LTI
channels. The key is to modify and accordingly to accom-
modate the duration of the delay spread of the multipath chan-
nels, and to estimate the phase and frequency of the received
signals when such signals are composed of replicas of the trans-
mitted signals corresponding to the full range of delays. We omit
further discussion for the sake of brevity.
B. Phase Synchronization Error Analysis
In the following analysis, for simplicity we assume the overall
time for phase synchronization is sufficiently short, such that the
oscillator phase noise [25], [26] is negligible and does not cause
appreciable changes to both the phase and frequency informa-
tion. Let the unit-amplitude sinusoidal reference signal gener-
ated at the master element using its local oscillator be given
by
(14)
where and are the carrier frequency and phase of the
reference signal, respectively. broadcasts this signal to all
the slave elements. The signal received by slave element ,
, can be written as

(15)
and the starting time of ’s time slot is
where . Given the noisy observation
in (15), slave element generates estimates of the received fre-
quency and phase, denoted as and , respectively. Using
Obviously when , or equivalently , there will its estimates, transmits the following signal back to in its
be no time overlap at all. But when , or equivalently designated time slot
, will start its time slot before the time slot as-
signed to ends.
To avoid collisions resulting from the overlap of time slots, The signal captured by can be written as
the duration of should include a guard time interval or cushion
duration so that even if starts its time slot before ’s ends,
no collision will happen as a result. The guard time should be at
least as long as the maximum possible length of time overlap, where . then generates an estimate
i.e. of the received phase, which is denoted as . Therefore, the
phase offset that is induced by the propagation channel can be
computed through4
(8)
Note that should include the duration of the round-trip com- (16)
munication between each slave sensor and the master sensor,
4Ideally the phase offset should be converted into a value in the radian range
and the processing time at the master sensor. This leads to
or . In this paper, for the ease of presentation, we choose not to
make such an explicit conversion, but note this radian conversion can be made
(9) after the phase synchronization process completes.
YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR 5543

This phase offset is used for the purpose of phase pre-com- where . Specific to this case, we define the
pensation, and is incorporated into the signal to be transmitted SNR as . Then, under the assumption of reasonably high
back to . Thus, the transmit signal is expressed as SNR, ML estimates and of and can be com-
puted, respectively, through [27] [see (20) and (21), shown at the
bottom of the page, where denotes the measure-
and the received phase at is given by ment phase of ]. From (20) and (21), we can see that im-
plementation of the above ML estimators makes use of both the
(17) measurement phase and the measurement mag-
nitudes of the received signal samples
An estimate of is generated at , and is denoted as . . It, however, requires neither the knowledge of the
is the final phase at , as a result of the phase synchronization signal amplitude , nor that of the noise power . Addition-
process. ally, since the measurement phase is obtained from
In the following, we will compute the aggregate phase error the principal argument of the complex phasor , phase un-
resulting from the implementation of this synchronization wrapping [28] is necessary here, which is a process to recover
algorithm, and will also characterize its statistical properties. the absolute value of the phase angle of a continuous function
But firstly, let us examine the frequency and phase estimates at that extends over a range of more than (relative to a pre-
each radar element. In general, these estimates can be obtained defined starting point). A phase unwrapping algorithm which
through a phase-locked loop (PLL). However, as indicated in complements the frequency and phase estimation in (20) and
[18], there is significant sub-optimality in using an analog PLL, (21) can be found in [27]. Note that due to the application of
and digital processing is more preferred when better accuracy this phase unwrapping procedure, the mod- phase ambiguity
is desired. Therefore, we apply the ML estimator instead to ob- issue5, which was discussed in [11] and [18], will not be a con-
tain estimates of these unknown but deterministic parameters. cern here.
While, as it is well known that nonlinear estimation is generally Let the complex AWGN in (19) be decomposed
plagued by threshold effects, which are closely related to the into two orthogonal components, and ,
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), we hereby assume the channel with being parallel to, and perpendicular
between the master element and each slave element has a rea-
to . Suppose and are
sonably high SNR such that the variance of the ML estimator
statistically independent with identical distribution, i.e.,
of the received frequency (phase) equals or closely approaches
its corresponding Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB). and . Let the esti-
Without loss of generality, let the signal received at sensor mation errors for the received frequency and phase be defined
and sent by be given by as

(18) (22)

and let the sampling interval be . We assume is com- and

plex additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) with zero mean (23)
and variance . We assume samples of noisy discrete-time
5The authors of [11] also assumed that the mod- phase ambiguity in each
observations are available, and are given by
phase measurement can be removed. They assumed that the number of multi-
ples of removed by the phase measurement process can be determined sep-
arately, either by prior knowledge of the approximate element positions or by
(19) other means.

(20)

(21)
5544 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011

respectively. Then, and can be explicitly calculated we denote the aggregate phase error after implementing the syn-
through [27] [see (24) and (25) at the bottom of the page]. Thus, chronization algorithm as
it can be shown that conditioning on the magnitudes
of the received signal6, the estimation errors and are
both Gaussian distributed with zero mean. Moreover, using the
approximation , it is easy to verify that In the following theorem, we formally state some synchroniza-
the ML estimators given in (20) and (21) are both unbiased at tion related results.
high SNR, i.e., and . The quality Theorem 1: After running this master-slave closed-loop
of the frequency and phase estimates can be further evaluated in phase synchronization algorithm, all the slave elements will
terms of their variances through the CRLB bound. The results synchronize their phase, in expectation, to the master node’s
are given as follows [27]: phase , i.e.

(27)

The aggregate phase error is given by

(26)

where is Gaussian distributed with zero mean.

Equation (26) indicates that and are statistically corre-
Proof: See Appendix I.
lated. This is because they are generated at the same radar ele-
Due to the statistical independence among , , , and
ment and from the same noisy observation (18). Note that,
, except between and , the variance of can be
however, observations obtained in different time slots at a par-
calculated through
ticular sensor, or at different sensors, will involve independent
noise realizations; we term these observations loosely as inde-
pendent observations. It is then reasonable to conjecture that es-
timates (frequency and/or phase) computed from these indepen-
dent observations are statistically independent from each other. where values of these different variances, including
Additionally, it is also observed that the CRLB bounds given , can be obtained from (26), by setting the
subscripts and other parameters including and to ap-
in(26) depend on the SNR (i.e., ) and the number of inde-
propriate values. To give an example, let us consider a special
pendent samples (i.e., ).
case where and are the same for the ML estimators at
Next, we define the error in estimating of (17) as
all these radar elements, and the SNR value, denoted by ,
, where can be computed through (25), provided that
is identical for both forward and reverse channels between the
samples of the received signal are given. For notational con-
master sensor and slave element , i.e., ,
formity, we define , thus . Finally,
. For this case, we can write explicitly as
6Note that the magnitudes are available at . shown in the equation at the bottom of the page.

(24)

(25)
YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR 5545

IV. ROUND-TRIP PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION

The master-slave closed-loop method described in the pre-
vious section requires a centralized entity to act as a coordinator
or controller. This method, however, does not seem very suitable
to cases where such a master entity does not exist. In this section,
we propose a round-trip phase synchronization algorithm. This
algorithm is inspired by the all-node-based method proposed
in [19] to globally synchronize the clocks in a sensor network,
and the time-slotted round-trip approach that was developed
in [20] and further improved or modified in [21] and [22] to
attain carrier synchronization for distributed beamforming in
multiuser wireless communication systems. These approaches
do not seem to be applicable to our problem of interest directly,
although a common feature shared by these approaches, that Fig. 2. Illustration of the round-trip phase synchronization method.
when in operation, a reference signal or message traverses in
loops through all the sensors, remains essential.
Likewise, the proposed round-trip phase synchronization 5) Upon receiving the signal transmitted from its upstream
scheme for coherent MIMO radar also employs an unmodulated neighbor, each sensor generates its local phase and fre-
beacon signal to travel through all these radar elements in a quency estimates from its observation, and calculates its
round-trip manner. Each node will record the phase information final phase based on its two-time phase estimates. In time
twice in order to compute the final phase. The equivalence of slot , relays the received signal to the next
the cumulative phase shift at each sensor, a quantity that is node in the cycle, i.e., .
directly related to the total propagation delay for the round-trip 6) Relay of the beacon signal ends after finishes its receipt
circuit, is the fundamental idea behind this proposed technique. of the signal from . generates a phase estimate from
This proposed technique, together with its analysis, employs its noisy observation, and then calculates its final phase.
pretty much the same assumptions as those in the master-slave
closed-loop method. For example, this scheme also assumes A. Algorithm Characterization and Timing Analysis
no a priori establishment of both time and frequency synchro-
In the following, we provide a detailed mathematical charac-
nization across all the radar elements, and assumes the channel
terization and timing analysis of this proposed synchronization
reciprocity. However, specific to this round-trip method, we
scheme. Again, we focus on the single-path and time-invariant
further assume that when one sensor transmits, the signal is only
channels for simplicity. We assume time slot starts at time
properly received by its intended receiver, i.e., its downstream
. Also, we assume all the time slots have the same duration
neighbor. This can be attained in practice, for example, by using
. should be long enough to ensure the proper reception and
directional transmissions or appropriate power control schemes
processing of the beacon signal. It, however, should also be rel-
at the transmitter (assuming each radar element loosely knows
atively short to reduce the synchronization overhead.
its and its immediate neighbors’ locations). In what follows, we
In time slot , node transmits a unit-amplitude sinu-
summarize this round-trip phase synchronization algorithm.
soidal beacon signal of duration to node . This beacon
1) Find a cycle which passes through all the radar ele-
signal is given by
ments. The radar elements are then labeled in order as
. Let be the initiating element.
(28)
2) In time slot , an unmodulated sinusoidal reference
signal is transmitted from to its downstream neighbor The signal received by can be expressed as
. This reference signal is further passed along the cycle
in a clockwise manner, as illustrated by Fig. 2. (29)
3) Upon receiving the reference signal, each radar element
generates its local phase and frequency estimates from where and . uses this
the noisy observation. In time slot , noisy observation to compute estimates of the received
which starts immediately after the conclusion of the re- frequency and phase. Such estimates are denoted as and
ceived signal, relays the received reference signal to the , respectively. It is worth noting that is the estimate of
next node in the cycle. will be the downstream neighbor the received phase at time when the signal is firstly
of . captured.
4) After the initiating node receives the signal from , Upon the end of receipt of the signal from node , i.e., at
it generates a phase estimate from its noisy observation. time , time slot begins immediately, and node starts
Time slot starts right after the conclusion of the re- to transmit. The signal that node transmits to its downstream
ceived signal, wherein transmits the original unmodu- neighbor is generated by using the phase and frequency es-
lated sinusoidal reference signal as in step 1) to sensor . timates and , and is given by
This signal is passed along the cycle in the counterclock-
wise direction, as shown in Fig. 2. (30)
5546 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011

We would like to point out that a periodic extension of the re- The signal received by can be expressed as
ceived signal can also be used as the transmit signal, as
was adopted in [21]. In particular, such a periodic extension can
be generated by using the frequency estimate and the phase
estimate to extrapolate the phase of at time . The where and . From
extrapolated phase is then given by . This extrap- , computes estimates of the received frequency and
olation approach, though, viable as it appears in practice, may phase, denoted as and , respectively. Then, can
result in degenerated accuracy in phase synchronization, as the compute its final phase through
error in estimating the carrier frequency will propagate and
(35)
accumulate over the course of extrapolation. For this reason, we
prefer to choose the transmit signal as per (30). In time slot , relays the beacon signal to .
Relay of the beacon signal is repeated for nodes The transmit signal can be written as
in time slot following the order of
. A general expression for the
signal transmitted from , is given by
The receive signal at is given by
(31)

where denotes the time when starts to relay the beacon

signal to , and is given by
where and
. This relay process continues along the cycle in the order of
(32)
until receives the signal
from . Thus, we can generalize the signal transmitted from
and are estimates of the received frequency and
, in time slot as
phase at node , respectively, upon receiving the signal trans-
mitted by sensor . Similarly, a general expression for the
received signal at , can be written as
where . and are
estimates of the frequency and phase, respectively, for the signal
received at and transmitted by . The signal received by
(33)
, can be written as
where follows from (32), and denotes the received
phase, and is given by

(34)
where we have
Additionally, the phase and frequency estimates obtained from (36)
(33) are denoted as and , respectively.
In time slot , transmits the following signal to Thus, can compute their final phase simply
through

(37)
The signal received at sensor is given by The whole signal relay procedure ends at time when fin-
ishes its reception of the beacon signal from . then gener-
ates a phase estimate from its received signal , and
calculates its final phase through

where and (38)

. uses this noisy signal to generate an
estimate of the received phase, which is denoted as .
The counterclockwise cycle starts in time slot when B. Phase Synchronization Error Analysis
node concludes its receipt of the signal from and starts Now let us examine the final carrier phase at each radar ele-
to relay a fresh sinusoidal signal as in (28) back to . The ment as well as their accuracy. Estimates of the phase and fre-
transmit signal is explicitly written as quency at each sensor are inevitably subject to errors, and these
errors are closely related to the particular type of the estimators
employed. Here again, we adopt the ML estimators as described
YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR
in Section III. Thus, the frequency and phase estimates, and
, can be calculated from (20) and (21), respectively. The es-
timation errors and , as defined, respectively, in (22) and
(23), can be shown to be both zero-mean Gaussian distributed,
with variance lower bounded by the CRLB bound given in (26).
In accordance with the definition of in (22), we define
the notations
Thus, in the clockwise cycle, the true frequency of the signal
propagating from to is written as
(39)
Likewise, in the counterclockwise cycle, the true carrier fre-
quency of the signal traversing from and received by
is given by
(40)
From (39) and(40), we can see that the frequency estimation
errors in upstream radar elements will propagate and build up
as the beacon signal proceeds to downstream radar elements.
Clearly, the sequential nature of the transmissions in this round-
trip algorithm accounts for the accumulated deviation of the true
transmit frequency from the initial reference frequency . Sim-
ilar phenomenon also occurs to the carrier phase at each radar
element. However, unlike the carrier frequency whose deviation
from the initial reference ( ) is only due to the cumulative fre-
quency estimation errors, the final phase at each radar element
is subject to the accumulation of both phase and frequency es-
timation errors. To this end, we summarize these results in the
following theorem.
Theorem 2: After running the round-trip phase synchroniza-
tion algorithm, all the radar elements will reach a consensus of
the carrier phase (in the statistical mean sense). More specifi-
cally, we have
(41)
where is a constant and is given by
(42)
With a little abuse of notation, let the resulting phase synchro-
nization error at each element be defined as . the round-trip method, since it requires all the radar elements
Then, can be expressed, in a general form, as
5547
where and are the cumulative phase errors induced
by the inaccurate estimation of the carrier phase and frequency,
respectively, and are both Gaussian distributed with zero mean.
Proof: See Appendix II.
A close review of (42) reveals that the mean of the final phase
, , is a function of the propagation delay between each
pair of neighboring radar elements. It is thus essential to en-
sure that the channels remain invariant during the period when
phase synchronization is implemented. We would also like to
point out that, similar to the master-slave method, this round-trip
phase synchronization algorithm is also applicable to multipath
time-invariant channels. In that case, each propagation delay
in (42) needs to be properly adjusted so as to accommo-
date the delay spread of the multipath channels.
When examining the detailed expressions for in
Appendix II, we find that , is a sum of
phase estimation error terms, but is equal to the sum of
phase estimation error terms divided by two. Suppose the
phase estimator employed at each radar element is identical,
then the variance of is the same for ,
which is twice the variance of . Whereas, we find that the
expression for for each radar element is more complicated
than the corresponding . This is due to the fact that
involves the propagation and accumulation of the related in-
dividual frequency estimation errors in the serial transmission
process. Finally, the variances of and can be easily
computed by using the covariance results, as given in (26), for
each constituent individual’s estimation error.
Remark 2: Note that in order to implement this round-trip syn-
chronization algorithm, cycles which can traverse all the radar
sensors need to be identified first. This problem can be formu-
lated into a combinatorial optimization problem, which may be
deemed as a special case of the minimum cost-to-time ratio cycle
problem [29, Ch. 3, Sec. 13]. The minimum cost-to-time ratio
cycle problem, first formulated by Dantzig et al. in the 1960’s
[30], has been considered to be a well-solved combinatorial
problem, as over the years various polynomial-time algorithms
have been developed, for example, see [31] for a description and
experimental analysis of some typical algorithms. Solutions to
this combinatorial problem usually do not contain any repeated
nodes. However, for our problem of interest, a particular sensor
can appear more than once. In other words, loops within a cycle
are allowed for our application. This, however, will not affect the
efficacy of this round-trip synchronization algorithm, as long as
the repeated node chooses the correct phase estimates to compute
its final phase. For example, a repeated sensor in the cycle can
choose its first and last phase estimates to compute its final phase.
V. BROADCAST CONSENSUS BASED PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION
In the last two sections, we have introduced and discussed the
master-slave closed-loop and the round-trip phase synchroniza-
tion algorithms. Note that both methods are not distributed in
nature. This can be easily verified for the master-slave approach,
wherein a centralized entity is required. This also holds true for
to participate in the synchronization process at the same time
and in a sequential manner. For the same reason, the round-trip
method does not scale well either. Furthermore, the initiating
5548 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011
node (or the master node in the first method) in both approaches
may fail unexpectedly, making it difficult to complete the re-
maining synchronization procedures. Thus, both methods are
not very robust against node failures.
As far as robustness and scalability goes, distributed algo-
rithms have enormous advantages, and are thus more desirable
for phase synchronization in coherent MIMO radar systems.
The essence of these algorithms is that one or more sensors
can communicate information with its immediate neighbors in a
round, and the computation is distributed over all the sensors in-
volved. In particular, when information averaging is concerned,
these distributed algorithms are usually referred to as distributed
consensus algorithms or gossip algorithms, e.g., [32]–[40]. Dis-
tributed consensus algorithms have been applied to a variety of
network-related scenarios. For example, they have been consid-
ered in [39], [40] for clock or time synchronization in wireless
sensor networks.
Among the various distributed consensus algorithms, of par-
ticular note is the broadcast-based consensus algorithm, which
has been studied in [36] and [37] without considering the sto-
chastic disturbances, and lately in [38] by taking nonzero-mean
stochastic perturbations into account. In this section, we present
a broadcast consensus based phase synchronization algorithm
for coherent MIMO radar systems, which is a direct extension of
the work given in [38]. Similar to the aforedescribed two phase
synchronization approaches, this algorithm assumes no a priori
time synchronization. For the ease of exposition, we assume the
carrier frequency synchronization is already established, while
noting that this assumption can be also relaxed. Thus, when a
sensor receives beacon signals from its neighbors, it only needs
to estimate the received phase.
In this algorithm, each element broadcasts a reference signal
containing its local phase information to all its immediate neigh-
bors. Its neighbors then average their local phase with the re-
ceived phase. Thus, no global operations or information ex-
changes are required in the process. As an inherent character-
istic, this algorithm exploits the broadcast nature of the wireless
communication environment, and obviates the need for sophis-
ticated underlying media access control mechanisms. Specific
to this problem, our analysis will examine in detail how the
propagation delays among neighboring sensors and the phase
errors induced by inaccurate local estimation affect the phase
synchronization accuracy. To this end, we briefly outline this
phase synchronization algorithm, whose mathematical charac-
terization and analysis will be furnished in the sequel.
1) Sensor elects to broadcast an unmodulated reference
signal.
2) Each neighbor of , upon receiving the broadcast refer-
ence signal, generates an estimate of the received phase.
If it is the first time for to receive a broadcast refer-
ence signal, it updates its phase with a weighted value of
the phase estimate; otherwise, it updates its phase with
a weighted average of its current phase and the phase
estimate.
3) The phase of each of the remaining sensors, including ,
remains unchanged.
4) This procedure continues, with each radar element having
the same probability to broadcast in every round.
Note that the absence of a common time reference implies
that none of these sensors know the true time, and as a result,
they do not know the “true” initial phase of their local oscillator.
Thus, when a sensor receives a broadcast reference signal for the
first time, we choose to update its phase using only the estimate
of the received phase.
A. Algorithm Characterization
Let an undirected and connected graph consti-
tuted by the radar elements be given, where is the node set
and is the edge set. The edge formation is related to sensor
communication connectivity. If two radar elements are within
the transmission range of each other, an edge is then said to be
formed to connect these two nodes. Note that we do not allow
self loops in the graph. The neighbors of are denoted by
. Let be the adjacency
matrix of , where for , if , and
otherwise. Further, we define a diagonal
matrix with each diagonal entry given by .
Thus, the graph Laplacian of is given by . We use
to denote the column vector in with all entries equal
to 0 except a 1 in position , and denote as the th largest
eigenvalue of a symmetric matrix.
As a priori time synchronization is not assumed, there is no
common time scale established among all these sensors. Each
radar element then operates according to its own local clock
which ticks independently according to a Possion process with
rate . For each element, the intertick times (the time between
two consecutive clock ticks) are exponentially distributed with
parameter , independent over time and across sensors. This is
equivalent to a single clock which ticks according to a rate-
Possion process and whose intertick times are i.i.d. exponen-
tially distributed with parameter [41]. Clearly, the proba-
bility that one particular sensor’s clock ticks at , given a clock
tick does occur at , is equal to the probability that any other
sensor’s clock ticks at , which is equal to in this case. On
average, there are clock ticks per unit of absolute time. Since
phase values at these radar elements are updated in a discrete
manner only at each time instant , for convenience, we use
the number of clock ticks (i.e., ) as a measure of time, instead
of the absolute time (i.e., ). This amounts to discretizing the
absolute time by denoting the interval as the th time
slot. However, we would like to note that in practice, to guar-
antee a high probability of which only one clock ticks during
each time slot, caution should be executed when selecting and
adjusting the unit of the absolute time.
Let denote the phase
values of these radar elements at the end of time slot . Sup-
pose sensor ’s clock ticks at the beginning of the th
time slot. Sensor then broadcasts a reference signal to all its
neighboring sensors, which is similar to (14) but contains its
up-to-date phase information. The phase value at each sensor is
updated according to the following equations:
(43)
(44)
Here is usually referred to as the mixing parameter.
denotes the phase estimate of the signal transmitted by
YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR 5549

sensor and received at sensor . From Section III, it follows The expectation of can be computed by
that

Thus, we can rewrite (43) into

Using the results stated in Lemma 1, it can be shown that the
sequence of will converge in expected value to the vector
of averages for every initial condition [33], [34] . In
(45)
other words, we have
Of note is that is zero-mean Gaussian distributed, and is
independent for different values of , , and .
Then using matrix-vector notation, we can reformulate (44)
and (45) all together more compactly into Additionally, this convergence is an almost sure convergence
[36], [37] .
(46) However, in the presence of the nonzero-mean perturbation
vector , will no longer converge to the vector
where is a random matrix, which, with prob- of averages . Fortunately, for our problem of interest, we
ability and assuming ’s clock ticks, takes the following are more concerned about whether or how well these different
value radar elements can synchronize to a same phase offset. This
same phase offset does not need to be , although it cannot
be either in this case because . Theoretically, for this
phase synchronization application, we have a lot of choices
when it comes to the specific value of this same phase offset
in (46) is the phase perturbation vector, whose to which each radar element needs to synchronize. Following
th element is given by the work in [35]–[38], here we adopt the average as the
common phase to be synchronized to. As a result, we define the
,
phase synchronization error as the deviation of the components
.
of from their average. This error, if denoted in component
It is easy to verify that , i.e., is a right eigenvector form, is
of corresponding to eigenvalue 1. Note that, however,
is not a left eigenvector of , i.e., .
We define the expectation of the random matrix as
. We also define a matrix . In the following Or the phase error vector is given by
lemma, we state some results about without proof, but note
that detailed information can be found in [38]. (48)
Lemma 1: The mean matrix is given by
It is easy to verify that the deviation vector evolves ac-
(47) cording to

which satisfies and . Further, for any (49)

, is a symmetric and nonnegative matrix, and satisfies
, where denotes the spectral radius of a In the following, we provide some synchronization result which
matrix [42]. is related to the asymptotic behavior of the expectation of .
Next, we define the expectation of the random perturbation Theorem 3: As this broadcast consensus based phase syn-
vector as . It is easy to verify that chronization algorithm iterates, the synchronization error at
is a column vector with its th element given by each element from their average , will converge in
expectation to a finite (steady-state) value, i.e.

(50)

Proof: See Appendix III.

B. Phase Synchronization Error Analysis
In the absence of the phase perturbation vector
phase synchronization algorithm is governed by
Equation (50) indicates that is a function of the
, this Laplacian matrix of the network, the mixing parameter ,
and the mean of the phase perturbation vector . Since is
connected, cannot be zero. Thus, Theorem 3 implies that this
algorithm, in general, cannot achieve average consensus, i.e.,
5550
we have . In other words, generally speaking, this
phase synchronization algorithm will lead to
(51)
This is in stark contrast to the previous two phase synchroniza-
tion algorithms which can synchronize the phase of each ele-
ment to the same value in expectation, as evidenced by (27)
and(41) in Theorem 1 and Theorem 2, respectively.
However, it should be noted that when , which is
equivalent to
(52)
we have , thus the average consensus is achieved,
and all the sensors will eventually synchronize in expectation to
the same phase value. The condition stipulated in (52) indicates
that the network should be well structured, such that the sum
of delay (or distance) from one sensor to all its neighbors is the
same as others. Those types of networks are referred to as equal
delay networks in [15] or time-delay balanced networks in [40].
Examples of this type of networks include, but are not limited
to, ring networks with equal distance and hypercube networks
with equal distance degree [40].
To further examine the performance of this phase synchro-
nization algorithm, we consider the total mean-square phase
synchronization error, or the mean-square phase error for short.
Let us define , and denote the
mean-square phase error as . Then, we have
This indicates that the mean-square deviation is pro-
portional to the average pairwise expected deviation among the
node states, and can thus be interpreted as a measure of how far
the components of are from consensus. In the following
theorem, we provide asymptotic upper and lower bounds on
.
Theorem 4: The limit of the mean-square phase error
is upper bounded by
(53)
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011
and is lower bounded by
(54)
where in (53), is a parameter defined as
and satisfies ; is given by the equation at the bottom
of the page, and .
Due to space limitations, a proof of Theorem 4 is not pro-
vided here, but we direct readers to [38] for more information.
Of note is that the upper bound given by(53) is closely related to
, which is the second smallest eigenvalue of and is
also referred to as the algebraic connectivity of [43]. For the
special case of , the lower bound given by (54) becomes
zero, and the upper bound(53) reduces to
Remark 3: We would like to point out that the bounds given
in Theorem 4 are very informative for practical implementa-
tion, as they reveal the relative range over which the phase at
each sensor deviates from their average. More specifically, the
lower bound indicates that the broadcast consensus based phase
synchronization algorithm, in general, has a nonreducible error
floor. The upper bound, on the other hand, tells the value of
the maximum possible phase synchronization error. Therefore,
for a given set of parameters, one can easily obtain an estimate
of the resulting phase synchronization error through Theorem
4. If that error is tolerable, one can certainly choose to employ
this phase synchronization algorithm; otherwise, one can seek
other alternatives. Of further note is that since this algorithm
is iterative in nature, the repeated information exchange among
radar elements can result in considerable communication over-
head which may merit special attention when implementing this
algorithm in practice.
F. DISCUSSION
A. Algorithm Comparison
Among these three approaches, the master-slave closed-loop
method is the simplest one. It, however, can lead to the best
phase synchronization accuracy. This is because there are only
two (the least number) nodes which participate in each round of
the phase synchronization process, i.e., the master node and one
slave node. Thus, the propagating accumulation of each indi-
vidual’s phase and frequency estimation errors is very limited,
and is less of a concern. Moreover, in this method, the phase
offset induced by the propagation channel is explicitly com-
pensated via the closed-loop operation, which further improves
YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR
the phase synchronization accuracy. Therefore, this approach
is particularly useful when a very precise phase synchroniza-
tion is required. It is generally applicable to situations where
a relatively powerful centralized entity exists or can be identi-
fied. It can also be repeatedly used in systems having tree-like
topologies or hierarchical structures. To complete the whole
phase synchronization process, a total of transmissions
are needed, including the broadcast transmission made by the
master node.
Unlike the master-slave closed-loop method, both the round-
trip and the broadcast consensus based algorithms do not re-
quire a powerful master entity. However, the round-trip scheme
does need a global initiator to start the phase synchronization
process. In theory, the global initiator can be any radar sensor
in the system. This round-trip method is able to synchronize all
the radar sensors to the same mean carrier phase, regardless of
the topology of these sensors as long as a cycle traversing all
these sensors can be identified. But since sensors in the system
participate in the phase synchronization process all together in a
cooperative fashion, this round-trip method may suffer from the
propagating accumulation of each individual’s phase and fre-
quency estimation errors, as was illustrated in Section IV. As
a result, this method may only be suitable to coherent MIMO
radar systems with a limited number of sensors. In other words,
it does not scale very well. However, of particular note is, that if
the clustering infrastructure is introduced as in [44], this round-
trip method, when coupled with the master-slave closed-loop
approach, is also applicable to coherent MIMO radar systems
with a relatively large number of radar sensors. This round-trip
method needs a total of transmissions to complete the phase
synchronization process.
The broadcast consensus based method, as we mentioned ear-
lier, is distributed and localized in nature. It needs neither a cen-
tralized entity nor a particular global initiator. It is scalable and
applicable to coherent MIMO radar systems composed of a large
number of densely scattered sensors. It is also robust to sensor
failures. But unfortunately, the functionality of this approach is
highly dependent on, and varies from topology to topology of
the radar sensors. For arbitrary topologies, this approach may
be only useful when a coarse phase synchronization is required.
This is because Theorem 3 indicates that this algorithm, in gen-
eral, cannot synchronize all the sensors to the same mean carrier
phase. However, for well structured sensor placements, such as
those which satisfy (52), this method is able to synchronize all
the sensors in expectation to (or very close to) the same phase
value, and thus may be used for the purpose of fine phase syn-
chronization. Since this algorithm runs in an iterative manner,
it generally requires more transmissions than the other two ap-
proaches to complete the whole synchronization process. Thus,
it has to be implemented at a relaxed time constraint as opposed
to a stringent one.
B. Some Practical Issues
As can be seen, in each of the proposed phase synchroniza-
tion algorithms, the propagation delay for the channel between
any pair of MIMO radar elements that are involved in the ref-
erence signal exchange, can be critical in determining the re-
sulting phase synchronization accuracy. A small uncertainty in
5551
the channel propagation delay, which may result from, for ex-
ample, the ambiguity in the location of certain radar elements or
the mobile scatters and other propagation anomalies, can lead
to intolerable phase variations across some or all the radar el-
ements. This is particularly true when high frequency carriers
are chosen as the reference signals. One way to alleviate this
unfavorable effect is to use relatively low carrier frequency. If
the carrier frequency is low enough, the location uncertainty of
the MIMO radar elements will not play an important role. An-
other way is to recalibrate these sensors periodically to track the
channel changes. This may induce some extra overhead, but the
accompanying benefits are in general well worth it. Besides, the
variations of the propagation channels among all these MIMO
radar elements, though dependent on the specific operating en-
vironment, are usually very slow; it takes a relatively long time
to reach the point where the physical changes in the medium are
so pronounced that the resulting phase mismatch seriously dete-
riorates the performance of the coherent processing, especially
for applications such as target localization. Therefore, very fre-
quent phase resynchronization may not be needed.
Another practical issue that merits attention is the phase dy-
namics or phase instability [45] in the coherent MIMO radar
system. In the previous sections, for simplicity we ignore the
phase shift due to the oscillator phase noise at each sensor by as-
suming such a shift is very small and negligible. However, note
that the oscillator phase noise is always present, and is an ir-
reducible error even in the absence of estimator errors. Without
loss of generality, let us take the reference signal defined by (14)
as one example, where is a fixed phase reference. Consid-
ering a practical oscillator and assuming negligible amplitude
noise, the reference signal in (14) is more generally expressed
as
where is a function of time. Oscillator phase noise can
cause to drift from the desired values in a random manner,
and can degrade the accuracy of phase synchronization. A quan-
titative understanding of the impact of phase noise in oscilla-
tors requires a rigorous characterization of the phase noise’s be-
havior. In recent years, extensive research has been done in this
regard; well-known references include, among others, [25] and
[26]. In particular, [26] presents a theory for phase noise that is
valid for any oscillator, regardless of the operating mechanisms.
According to this theory, for a single noise source, can be
characterized by [26]
(55)
where is an external source, noise, or otherwise; is a
periodic function dependent on the oscillator’s topology, which
models the way a particular input source affects the oscillator
phase. Note that (55) is derived using the nonlinear perturbation
technique. When is a stationary white or modulated-white
noise source, such as shot and thermal noise, it can be shown
that becomes, asymptotically with , a Gaussian random
variable with a constant mean (i.e., the intended phase) and a
variance that is linearly increasing with time, i.e., ,
5552
Fig. 3. Two example topologies for the simulation study. (a) A grid topology of 36 nodes. (b) A ring topology of 25 nodes.
where is a scalar constant [26]. Suppose the period of
, can be expressed as [26]
Clearly, the parameter is also dependent on the specific os-
cillator circuit. The methods for computing and its values for
some practical electronic oscillators can be found in [26]. Once
the parameter is identified, by incorporating at each
radar element into the analysis of the final phase synchroniza-
tion error, one should be able to easily assess the phase noise’s
impact on the accuracy of each proposed phase synchronization
algorithm. To counter the effect of phase noise in oscillators, pe-
riodic phase synchronization remains indispensable. How often
the phase synchronization procedure needs to be repeated, how-
ever, is dependent on, among other factors, the aggregate impact
of the phase noise across all the local oscillators on the phase
synchronization accuracy, as well as the phase accuracy or sta-
bility requirements of the coherent MIMO radar system and the
specific application. It is indicated in [12, p. 261] that the phase
accuracy or stability requirements for coherent processing by a
monostatic or bistatic radar can range from less than one de-
gree to many tens of degrees of RF phase over a coherent pro-
cessing interval, depending on the type and duration of coherent
processing. We conjecture that similar phase accuracy or sta-
bility requirements may hold as well for coherent processing by
a MIMO radar system.
VII. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, we provide some simulation results to
demonstrate the efficacy of the phase synchronization algo-
rithms. While it is desirable to study the relation between the
performance of the phase synchronization algorithms and the
performance of coherent MIMO radar for applications such as
target localization or detection, this line of research has been
already conducted in [4]–[7]. For example, in [5], the authors
modeled the phase synchronization errors as zero-mean random
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011
is variables7, and studied the impact of the phase synchronization
errors on the target localization accuracy in coherent MIMO
radar, both analytically and numerically. [5] presents some
interesting and elegant results, which dovetail our work on
phase synchronization very well (or the other way around).
We thus do not repeat or duplicate these results in this paper
to illustrate how the phase synchronization errors affect the
performance of coherent MIMO radar. Interested readers are
referred to [4]–[7] for further information. Also, as the first two
synchronization approaches can be implemented and verified
with relative ease, for brevity, in this section we only focus
on the broadcast consensus based algorithm and study its
convergence behaviors.
Since the broadcast consensus based algorithm is applicable
to coherent MIMO radar systems composed of a large number
of densely scattered sensors, as we discussed in Section VI, we
consider here two example topologies8. The first one, as shown
in Fig. 3(a), is a grid topology of 36 sensors, and the distance be-
tween any two neighboring nodes along the same horizontal or
vertical line is . The second one, as illustrated by Fig. 3(b),
contains 25 sensors which are equally distributed on a circle
with a radius of . We set the reliable transmit-receive range
to . Thus, the grid topology in Fig. 3(a) does not satisfy (52),
while the ring topology in Fig. 3(b) does. In our simulations,
the frequency of the reference signal is set to
rad/second. We assume the SNR value of the received reference
signal at each sensor and during each time slot is the same, and
is equal to . The sample number is set
to 10. Thus, through (26), the CRLB bound of the phase esti-
mate can be computed, which equals 0.0172. We set the mixing
parameter to 0.5. For each example topology, we randomly
generate a set of “true” initial phase values at these radar sen-
sors, which are over the radian range . We conduct 2000
independent trials under the same set of initial values, and then
7This seems to be a valid assumption according to our analysis of the phase
synchronization errors.
8Note these two example topologies are considered here for the purpose of
illustration only; they might not necessarily be applicable in practice.
YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR 5553

Fig. 4. Simulation results for the grid topology in Fig. 3(a). (a) Ensemble average of versus for , , and . (b) Ensemble average of versus .

Fig. 5. Simulation results for the ring topology in Fig. 3(b). (a) Ensemble average of versus for . (b) Ensemble average of versus .

compute the ensemble average of some parameters of interest acceptable under the application’s performance requirements,
as well as their corresponding theoretical results. another phase synchronization algorithm which leads to a
In Fig. 4(a), we plot the ensemble average of the phase better accuracy may be used instead. In Fig. 4(b), we plot the
synchronization error for example sensors, , , ensemble average of the squared phase error . We also plot
and . These sensors have 3, 5, and 8 immediate neighbors, the theoretical value of the upper and lower bounds on the limit
respectively, and they actually represent all the three types of of the mean-square phase error , which are computed
sensors in this grid topology. For each example sensor, we also through (53) and (54), respectively. It is observed that after the
compute the corresponding theoretical limit value of the mean algorithm converges, the mean-square phase error does fall in
phase synchronization error through (50). Their theoretical between the upper and lower bounds. This corroborates our
values are different from each other under this simulation theoretical analysis.
setup, and are plotted in Fig. 4(a) for comparison purpose. We Similarly, for the example ring topology illustrated in
can see that as the algorithm proceeds, the simulated value of Fig. 3(b), we plot both simulation and theoretical results for
the mean phase synchronization error at each sensor closely and in Fig. 5(a) and (b), respectively. In
approaches their respective theoretical limit value. But note Fig. 5(a), we pick up as the example sensors.
that since the mean phase synchronization error varies from Since this topology satisfies (52), we have . This means
sensor to sensor and not all of them approach 0, the applica- that the theoretical limit value of for each sensor in
bility of this algorithm in practice will be highly dependent on this topology is the same, and is equal to 0. Also, the lower
whether those nonzero mean phase synchronization errors are bound on the limit of reduces to 0. Again, as shown
acceptable or not. If those phase synchronization errors are not in both Figs. 5(a) and 5(b), the theoretical values exhibit a good
5554 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011

match with the experiment results. A comparison of the results (61)

plotted in Figs. 4 and 5 clearly indicates that the functionality
of this broadcast consensus based algorithm is highly related to where in (57), we apply (17); in (58), we use (16). Since ,
the topology of the radar sensors. , , and are all zero-mean Gaussian distributed,
is also Gaussian distributed and satisfies . Thus,
VIII. CONCLUSION we have . This then completes the proof.
Practical realization of the coherent processing in widely
separated MIMO radar systems requires the development of APPENDIX II
implementable techniques to ensure a common notion of phase PROOF OF THEOREM 2
among all the distributed radar elements. In this work, we pro- Proof: By plugging9 (22) and (23) into (34) and recursively
posed and studied three effective approaches to achieve phase applying (34), the carrier phase of the signal received by and
synchronization in coherent MIMO radar systems. The first sent by in the clockwise cycle can be expressed as
one is the master-slave closed-loop approach, which employs
a master-slave architecture. This method is very simple, and
is suitable for fine phase synchronization. But it may be easily
plagued by the master sensor failure. The second one is the
round-trip algorithm, which employs an unmodulated beacon
signal to travel through all the radar elements in a round-trip (62)
manner. This method is applicable to arbitrary topologies
of the radar sensors as long as a cycle traversing all these In a similar manner, we can also obtain an expression for the
sensors can be identified, but its performance is susceptible to carrier phase at in the counterclockwise cycle, which
the propagating accumulation of each individual’s phase and is given by
frequency estimation errors. The third one is the broadcast
consensus based algorithm, which is scalable, and is distributed
and localized in nature. But this algorithm may take a number
of transmissions to reach the convergence, for it runs in an
iterative fashion. And its performance is highly dependent on
the underlying topology. Distinct as they are, these algorithms
are all time asynchronous, and in particular, the master-slave
closed-loop algorithm and the round-trip algorithm also require
no a priori frequency synchronization. These algorithms should
cater to different needs arising as a result of different number
of MIMO radar elements, different sensor placements, as well (63)
as different operational preferences. Furthermore, using the
same analytical framework, we mathematically characterized Thus, the final phase at , can be expressed
each phase synchronization method, derived and analyzed as
some relevant figures of merit such as the aggregate phase
(64)
synchronization error. We discussed some issues that may
arise in practice when implementing these algorithms, and also where is a constant phase as given in (42). denotes
provided simulation results that are focused on the broadcast the phase error resulting from the inaccurate estimation of the
consensus based algorithm. These simulation results indicate a carrier phase, and is written by
good match with our theoretical analysis.

APPENDIX I
PROOF OF THEOREM 1
Proof: Given the definitions of and all other parame- denotes the phase error due to the inaccurate estimation of
ters, we have that for the carrier frequency, and is written as

(56)
(57)

(58)

(59)

(60) 9Appropriate subscript or parameter initialization is assumed.

YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR 5555

Now let us consider two special cases of an , as de-

noted by (38) and(35), respectively. Since
and , we can expand in
(38) into

Since the estimation errors and , as defined, respec-

tively, in (22) and(23), are both zero-mean Gaussian distributed,
it is easy to see that and are both Gaussian distributed
Plugging (39) with , (62) with , and (63) with with zero mean, and thus (41) is obtained. We then complete this
into the above equation, can be further expanded into proof.

APPENDIX III
where we have PROOF OF THEOREM 3
Proof: Repeatedly applying (49), we obtain

Since are i.i.d drawn with equal probability,

we have

Similarly, we can also expressly compute in (35). So the

final phase at can be expressed as

where the last equality follows from the property in Lemma 1

that is a left eigenvector of corresponding to eigenvalue
where we have 1, i.e., or . Since and ,
are statistically independent, we obtain

Therefore, the expectation of the deviation vector can

be computed through
Finally, for those two cases of and that are
not included in (64), it is easy to show that the final phase at
and can be expressed in three parts. For completeness, we
give the final expressions for and directly as follows:
where we define .
Let the eigendecomposition of be given by
, where is a matrix whose columns are the
eigenvectors of , and is a diagonal matrix whose diag-
onal elements are the corresponding eigenvalues. It then follows
that and
5556 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 59, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2011
According to Lemma 1, we have . Thus, it is easy
to see that will converge to 0, as . For the
same reason, we have
Thus, the steady-state value of can be written as
where the second equality follows from (47) in Lemma 1.
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YANG AND BLUM: PHASE SYNCHRONIZATION FOR COHERENT MIMO RADAR
Yang Yang received the B.Eng. degree in informa-
tion engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University,
Xi’an, China, in 2001, the M.Eng. degree in elec-
trical engineering from the National University of
Singapore in 2004, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from Lehigh University, Bethlehem,
PA, in 2009.
From 2002 to 2004, he was with the Institute for In-
focomm Research, Singapore, as a Research Scholar.
During summer 2007, he was an intern with Bell Lab-
oratories, Alcatel-Lucent, Crawford Hill, Holmdel,
NJ. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Lehigh University.
His research interests include communications, signal processing, and their ap-
plications to distributed sensor processing, wireless sensor networks, and en-
ergy/power systems.
View publication stats
5557
Rick S. Blum (S’83–M’84–SM’94–F’05) received
the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in
1984 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in
1987 and 1991, respectively.
He was a member of Technical Staff at General
Electric Aerospace, Valley Forge, PA (1984–91) and
he graduated from GE’s Advanced Course in Engi-
neering. Since 1991, he has been with the Electrical
and Computer Engineering Department, Lehigh Uni-
versity, Bethlehem, PA, where he is currently a Professor and holds the Robert
W. Wieseman Chaired Research Professorship in Electrical Engineering. He
holds several patents. His research interests include signal processing for com-
munications, sensor networking, radar, and sensor processing.
Dr. Blum is on the editorial board for the Journal of Advances in Information
Fusion of the International Society of Information Fusion. He was an Asso-
ciate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING (2000–2002)
and for the IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS. He has edited special issues for
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED
TOPICS IN SIGNAL PROCESSING, and the IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS
IN COMMUNICATIONS. He is a Member of the Sensor Array and Multichannel
(SAM) Technical Committee (2009-present); the Signal Processing for Commu-
nications (SPC) Technical Committee (1999–2001); and the Communications
Theory Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society. He was on
the IEEE Communications Society’s Awards Committee. He is an IEEE Third
Millennium Medal winner, an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished
Lecturer (2011–2012), and a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Sigma Xi. He was
awarded an ONR Young Investigator Award (1997) and an NSF Research Ini-
tiation Award (1992). His IEEE Fellow Citation “for scientific contributions to
detection, data fusion and signal processing with multiple sensors” acknowl-
edges some early contributions to the field of sensor networking.