Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635

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Digital Signal Processing

www.elsevier.com/locate/dsp

Colocated MIMO radar waveform optimization with receive

beamforming ✩
Shenghua Zhou a , Jing Lu a , Pramod K. Varshney b,∗ , Jianlai Wang c , Hui Ma a,∗ ,
Hongwei Liu a
a
National Laboratory of Radar Signal Processing, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China
b
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University, NY 13244, USA
c
China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Transmit waveform diversity brings some advantages to colocated Multiple-Input Multiple-Output
Available online 16 December 2019 (MIMO) radars. Current waveform design techniques do not sufficiently exploit the degrees of freedom
from the receive end. In this paper, we devise waveform optimization criteria with the receive end
Keywords:
beamforming operation. With mutual correlation sidelobes suppressed at the receive end, some degrees
Colocated MIMO radar
of freedom can be released for a lower global sidelobe level. For transmit beampatterns with unequal
Receive beamforming
MIMO radar gains, two Peak Sidelobe Level (PSL) measures are discussed, one for identical range compression PSL
Waveform design and the other for the same distance to the noise level. Numerical results are given for beampatterns with
Peak sidelobe level mono-peak, two peaks with equal gains and two peaks with unequal gains, all indicating that the criteria
result in better sidelobe suppression.
© 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction [3,4], transmit antennas often transmit different waveforms. In this

Design of transmit waveforms is an important problem in radar
systems. For radar systems that use high time-bandwidth-product
waveforms, range compression is a necessary operation, resulting
in undesired range sidelobes and making high-power target re-
turns prevent the detection of low-power returns in nearby range
cells. Traditional array radars often transmit identical signals from
different transmit antennas per Pulse Reperition Interval (PRI), gen-
erally with different phase offsets to steer transmit beams into
different spatial directions. The signal is often chosen from wave-
form families with low range sidelobes, such as Barker codes,
multi-phase Barker codes [1] and Px codes [2]. In Multiple-Input
Multiple-Output (MIMO) radars with colocated antennas, however
✩
This work is partially supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished
Young Scholars (No. 61525105), the Fund for Foreign Scholars in University Research
and Teaching Programs (the 111 Project No. B18039), the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities, the program for Cheung Kong Scholars and In-
novative Research Team in university, Xidian University-Syracuse University Joint
Center for Information Fusion, the Postdoctoral Innovation Talent Support Program,
the National Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (No. 2019JQ-289), the
New Teacher Innovation of Xidian University (No. XJS18002), and the National Nat-
ural Science Foundation of China (No. 61601340).
*Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: shzhou@mail.xidian.edu.cn (S. Zhou), varshney@syr.edu
(P.K. Varshney), wjl820518@sina.com (J. Wang), h.ma@xidian.edu.cn (H. Ma),
hwliu@xidian.edu.cn (H. Liu).
case, most of the existing waveform families are not suitable and,
therefore, waveform optimization is an important topic in MIMO
radar research [5–7].
According to the distance between radar antennas, MIMO radars
are generally categorized into two types, namely, distributed MIMO
radars [3,8] and colocated MIMO radars [4]. Both kinds of MIMO
radar have their advantages over their conventional counterparts.
The former puts antennas widely separated in space and has a
better detection performance than conventional monostatic radar
[9]. The latter puts antennas colocated in space like conventional
phased-array radar and emits different waveforms with more de-
grees of freedom. Moreover, colocated MIMO radar can identify
more targets with the same number of transmit antennas and also
have flexible transmit beampatterns, including both directional [10,
6] and uniform transmit beampatterns. Meanwhile, it can also pre-
vent hostile electronic countermeasurement (ECM) devices from
deceiving MIMO radar [11].
All the advantages rely on transmit waveforms with good prop-
erties. For distributed MIMO radars, transmit waveforms should
be orthogonal to each other [5] even at different mutual delays
[12], in order to alleviate mutual interference. For colocated MIMO
radar however, waveform optimization is much more complicated.
First, sidelobe level at the receive end is a complicated combi-
nation of the sidelobes of transmit waveforms. Second, colocated
MIMO radar needs to match transmit beampatterns with specific

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsp.2019.102635
1051-2004/© 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
2 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635

shapes [13]. Third, good waveform optimization depends not only returns, [Jk ]i , j = δi +k, j , δk, j is the Kronecker delta symbol defined
on optimization algorithm in use but also on how to construct the by
waveform design criterion. A fair amount of work exists on wave- 
form design for colocated MIMO radars with different optimiza- 0 k= j
tion tools, such as the mutual information based method [14], the
δk, j = (3)
1 else
quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) method
[15], the limited memory Broyden Fletcher Goldfarb and Shan- ar (·) ∈ C N r ×1 denotes the received steering vector, (·)T denotes
non (L-BFGS) algorithm [10], the sequential optimization method the transpose operation, Z = [z1 , · · · , z N c ]T ∈ C N c × N r denotes the
[16], the double least− pth minimax method [17], the sequential channel interference component, and zk , k = 1, · · · , N c stands for
quadratic programming (SQP) based method and the alternating the noise term at the kth snapshot.
direction method of multipliers (ADMM) based method [18]. The As [J−k ]i , j = δi −k, j = δ j ,i −k = δ j +k,i , we have
optimization tool in use is an important part of a good perfor-
mance but here we focus on how to construct better waveform JkT = J−k . (4)
optimization criteria.
In general, colocated MIMO radar waveform optimization in- With a range compression weight S/ N c , the output can be ex-
volves two tasks, namely, transmit beampattern matching and pressed in a vector form as
sidelobe suppression. It makes sense to exploit more degrees of    
freedom for optimization. Transmit waveform optimization should x = vec SH X / N c = β av ( f a ) + I ⊗ SH / N c z (5)
suppress sidelobe outputs of range compressors at the receive end,
wherein the receive beamforming operation can suppress mutual where (·)H denotes the conjugate transpose operation, vec(·) de-
correlation sidelobes between angular waveforms. Therefore, an at- notes the vectorization operation,
tenuation factor is developed and imposed over mutual correlation
sidelobes such that some degrees of freedom can be exploited. av ( f a ) = ar ( f a ) ⊗ Rs (k) at ( f a ) (6)
Meanwhile, instead of square shaped desired transmit beampat-
terns, three control points are used for each peak of transmit denotes the compound transmit-receive steering vector, z = vec(Z),
beampattern, with two for the first null points and one for the ⊗ denotes the Kronecker-product operation, I denotes the identity
peak position, transmit antennas with limited elements. In our matrix,
waveform design criteria, three groups of spatial directions are
defined, one for transmit beampattern matching, one for spatial Rs (k) = SH Jk S/ N c (7)
receive channels and one for possible spatial directions. The op- denotes the shifted waveform covariance matrix, and (·) H
denotes
eration can reduce the number of elements to suppress. If the the conjugate transpose operation.
receive array has a much larger aperture than the transmit array
From (4), it can be shown that
[19], only auto correlation sidelobes should be suppressed. We also
discuss two different definitions of the final sidelobe level in cases RH H T H
s (k) = S Jk S/ N c =S J−k S/ N c = Rs (−k) . (8)
where a desired directional transmit beampattern has two peaks of
unequal heights. Numerical results are given for transmit beampat- If channel noise interference is white or wideband in contrast
terns with monopeak, two uniform peaks and two unequal peaks, to receive-end bandwidth, different rows of Z are often assumed
all indicating that the attenuation factor has a significant positive to be independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.). We assume
effect on sidelobe suppression. that the covariance matrix is Rz = E(zk zkH ), k = 1, · · · , N c , where
E(·) denotes the expectation operation. Then
2. Colocated MIMO radar receive end processing  
E zzH = RTz ⊗ I (9)
2.1. Receive beamforming algorithms for colocated MIMO radar
and the interference component has the covariance matrix [20]
Consider a colocated MIMO radar with an N t -element linear    H 
transmit array and N r -element linear receive array. The waveform H H H
RZ = E I ⊗ S / N c zz I ⊗ S /Nc = Rz ⊗ Rs (0)/ N c . (10)
transmitted by the ith antennas is denoted by si ∈ C N c ×1 , i =
1, · · · , N t and denoted S = [s1 , · · · , s N t ] ∈ C N c × N t , where N c de-
notes the number of codes within each waveform, and C de- 2.2. Colocated MIMO radar receive beamforming
notes the complex plane. After coherent synthesis in space, trans-
mit waveforms will form different waveform signatures in space, A beamforming operation coherently combines signal x for a
termed as angular waveforms here and defined by high signal-to-interference-noise ratio (SINR) output. In practical
applications, receive beamforming is performed by a bank of re-
s ( f a ) = Sat ( f a ) (1) ceive beamforming filters [20]. Each filter is steered to a spatial
for spatial angular sector θ , where f a = 0.5 sin θ for linear ar- direction and is hence called a spatial receive channel here. The
ray, termed angular frequency, is defined to facilitate subse- weight of the spatial receive channel associated with angular fre-
quent derivations, and at (·) ∈ C N t ×1 denotes the transmit steering quency f a0 is denoted by ws ( f a0 ) and the output is an estimate of
vector. We can control the characteristic of angular waveforms the complex amplitude of target returns, i.e.,
through optimizing transmit waveforms S.
Signals received by the receive array can be written as β̂ ( f a0 ) = wH H
s ( f a0 ) x, s.t., ws ( f a0 ) av ( f a0 ) = 1. (11)
In practice, one may use another range compression weight,
X = β Jk s ( f a ) aTr ( f a ) + Z = β Jk Sat ( f a ) aTr ( f a ) + Z (2)
such as SRs−1 / N c if Rs is invertible, and then the constraint will
where β denotes the complex amplitude of target return, the pre- have a different form.
fix matrix Jk ∈ B N c × N c is a shift matrix, B = {0, 1} used to repre- The weights in [21,22] all have a Kronecker product structure
sent the signal mutual delay between range compressor and target as
 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635 3

R− T
z ar ( f a0 ) at ( f a0 ) If the window, denoted by wr , is imposed on ar ( f a0 ), the attenua-
ws ( f a0 ) = ⊗ . (12)
aTr ( f a0 ) R− T ∗
z ar ( f a0 ) aH
t ( f a0 ) Rs (0) at ( f a0 )
tion factor becomes

MIMO beamforming can form its weight with online data ρr ( f a0 ; f a ) = ar ( f a0 − f a )H wr / N r (23)
(adaptive) or without (quiescent). As Rz is generally
 unknown,

the MIMO Capon algorithm estimate it by R̂z = E XH X / N c . As and wr = 1 becomes a special case.
waveform optimization is generally too time-consuming to be per- From the application perspective, ρk ( f a0 , f a ), standing for side-
lobe level in spatial receive channels, should have a low level.
formed online, we use the MIMO least square (LS), which simply
However, conventional MIMO radar waveform optimization algo-
assumes R̂z = I, and the weight is
rithms typically suppress only ck ( f a0 , f a ) [10]. It can of course
1 reduce ρk ( f a0 , f a ), but it is different from ck ( f a0 , f a ). In our for-
ws ( f a0 ) = ar ( f a0 ) ⊗ at ( f a0 ) (13) mulation, we introduce an additional term ρr ( f a0 , f a ), which is
N r N t p ( f a0 )
generally less than one for f a0 = f a .1 Therefore, we will suppress
where we used the fact N r = aH
r ( f a0 )ar ( f a0 ), and sidelobes represented directly by ρk ( f a0 , f a ), which equivalently
imposes a weight over conventional sidelobe measures ck ( f a0 , f a ).
p ( f a0 ) = aH
t ( f a0 )Rs (0)at ( f a0 )/ N t (14)
denotes the transmit beampattern, a measure of spatial distribu- 2.3. Quantization of angular frequency
tion of transmitted signal power. If Rs (0) = I, then p ( f a ) = 1 for
f a ∈ [−0.5, 0.5], corresponding to the uniform transmit beampat- The angular waveform s ( f a ) varies continuously along with the
tern. The transmit beampattern here means transmit gain in con- angular frequency f a = 0.5 sin θ , but we do not have optimization
trast to the uniform transmit beampattern. tools available that are efficient for optimization with continu-
ous f a . Therefore, we have to quantize the angular frequency by
In spatial receive channel identified by f a0 , the output of the
putting them in a number of bins and representing each bin by
target return coming from spatial direction f a can be expressed by
a discrete angular frequency. If too many angular frequencies are
used, the optimization time cost may be huge, whereas if the num-
ρk ( f a0 ; f a ) = wHs ( f a0 ) av ( f a ) (15)
ber of selected angular frequencies is insufficient, sidelobes over
where the common amplitude term β is ignored since it does not other angular frequencies may increase greatly. In this case, we
affect the sidelobe level. Hereafter ρk ( f a0 ; f a ) are termed as side- define three groups of angular frequencies in this paper.
lobe outputs of the spatial receive channels associated with f a0 The first group of angular frequencies is defined for transmit
and input angular waveforms from f a . beampattern matching, denoted by f0 ∈ C N 0 ×1 , where N 0 denotes
For the beamforming weight of form (12), we have the number of angular frequencies used for transmit beampattern
matching. One can control the accuracy of beampattern matching
ρk ( f a0 ; f a ) = ρr ( f a0 ; f a ) rk ( f a0 ; f a ) (16) by adjusting the number N 0 . There are many measures of transmit
beampattern matching performance [6], especially for omnidirec-
where tional transmit beampatterns. In radar applications, we are often
aH −T interested in transmit beampattern with one or more peaks. For
r ( f a0 ) R̂z ar ( f a )
ρr ( f a0 ; f a ) = (17) such desired beampatterns, we can use three angular frequencies
aTr ( f a0 ) R̂− T ∗
z ar ( f a0 ) to localize the position of a narrow transmit beam, one for the
ck ( f a0 ; f a ) peak and two for the first nulls. For wider beams, we can use more
rk ( f a0 ; f a ) = (18)
p ( f a0 ) angular frequencies for each peak.
The second group of angular frequencies, denoted by fa ∈
stands for the receive beamforming attenuation factor, and
C N a ×1 , contains the angular frequencies to which spatial receive
channels are steered, where N a denotes the number of spatial re-
ck ( f a0 ; f a ) = aH
t ( f a0 ) Rs (k) at ( f a )/ N t . (19)
ceive channels deployed at the receive end. Each filter of the bank
If f a0 = f a , ρk , rk and ck turn out to be auto correlation side- aims at a specific angular frequency (spatial direction). Each spa-
lobes or range sidelobes. From (8), we have tial receive channel deals with returns from a space volume, such
that target returns within the volume can pass the filter, whereas
ckH ( f a0 ; f a ) = c −k ( f a ; f a0 ) (20) target returns beyond will be attenuated significantly. In practice,
the number of spatial receive channels to deploy depends on many
so both auto and cross correlation sidelobes are conjugate sym- factors, such as the maximum SINR loss acceptable.
metric. It is expected that target returns from all spatial directions will
In general, ρr < 1, indicating that target returns from directions have low sidelobe outputs in the spatial receive channels. The third
that are not of interest will be attenuated. The MIMO LS algorithm group of angular frequencies, denoted by fm ∈ C N m ×1 , includes
will output sidelobes all possible angular waveforms from different spatial directions,
where N m denotes the number of real target returns to simulate.
1
ρk ( f a0 ; f a ) = [ar ( f a0 ) ⊗ at ( f a0 )]H av ( f a ) (21) In general, angular frequencies in fm have a smaller spacing than
N r B ( f a0 ) those in fa and then N m ≥ N a .
and the attenuation factor for the MIMO LS algorithm can be ex-
pressed by 2.4. Peak sidelobe level (PSL) measures

1 The sidelobe level measures map all sidelobes via a positive

ρr ( f a0 ; f a ) = ar ( f a0 )H ar ( f a )/ N r = ar ( f a0 − f a )H 1/ N r
Nr
where 1 denotes an all-one vector.
It is common to imposes a window on the weight, such as
the Hamming window and the Chebyshev window. For colocated
MIMO radars, one can impose the window directly on av or on ar .
(22)
value. The Integrated Sidelobe Level (ISL) and the PSL are typi-
cal sidelobe level measures. We focus mainly on the PSL measure,
1
For adaptive beamforming algorithms, it is not always the case but in general it
depends also on the interference background and the way to estimate Rz .
4 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635

which, however, also has various definitions, different in the side- and RZ = Rz ⊗ Rs (0)/ N c , the noise covariance level output of the
lobes involved and the weights to combine them. spatial receive channel using weight (12) can be formulated as
We first define the PSL of transmit waveforms according to (7),    
by σ 2 ( f a0 ) = E(wHs ( f a0 ) I ⊗ SH / N c zzH I ⊗ SH / N c ws ( f a0 ))

PSLT = 20 log10 max |Rs (k)| (24) = wH

s ( f a0 )(I ⊗ Rs (0)/ N c )ws ( f a0 )
k∈ka 1
= −1
where | · | with a matrix entry denotes a matrix of absolute values N c p ( f a0 )aH
r ( f a0 )Rz ar ( f a0 )
of the entry and ka = {1, · · · , N c − 1}. 1
Now we define PSLs of the spatial receive channel with f a0 . = .
N c N r p ( f a0 )
Based on ck ( f a0 ; f a ), rk ( f a0 ; f a ) and ρk ( f a0 ; f a ), we can define
three PSLs by
(31)
With the range compression weight in use, the noise level of a
PSLAC ( f a0 ) = 20 log10 max |ck ( f a0 ; f a ) / p m | (25) spatial receive channel depends on the transmit gain of the spa-
k∈km
f a ∈[−0.5,0.5] tial direction. The higher the gain, the lower the noise levels. If the
transmit beampattern is omnidirectional, the noise levels in spa-
PSLRC ( f a0 ) = 20 log10 max |rk ( f a0 ; f a ) | (26)
k∈km tial receive channels are close to each other. In this case, PSLAC or
f a ∈[−0.5,0.5] PSLRC are close to each other and can be deemed as equivalent.
and In the optimization process, PSLAC , without the division operation,
has a lower computational cost and is hence preferable. If the
PSLBC ( f a0 ) = 20 log10 max |ρk ( f a0 ; f a ) | (27) transmit beampattern is directional, spatial receive channels are
k∈km generally deployed only for the peaks and the noise levels in dif-
f a ∈[−0.5,0.5]
ferent spatial receive channels may be different if the peaks have
respectively,2 where km = {1 − N c , · · · , −1, 1, · · · , N c − 1}, and p m different amplitudes. Unbalanced transmit beampattern peaks may
in PSLAC ( f a0 ) is a constant to normalize sidelobe outputs. be used for instance in the cognitive mode when two targets un-
For PSLAC , the normalization factor p m should be properly se- der tracking need different powers for a more efficient use of the
lected. If we define p m = max p ( f a ) for f a ∈ [−0.5, 0.5], we need transmit energy. It is interesting to study how to balance the side-
to search for the peak of the transmit beampattern at each itera- lobe levels in the spatial receive channels.
tion, which will greatly reduce the efficiency of the optimization When we define PSLs to suppress in a waveform optimization
program. For simplicity, in the optimization process we normalize criteria, we have two strategies in hand, i.e. the same channel PSL
ck ( f a0 ; f a ) by p m = max p ( f a ) for f a ∈ fa , which may exceed one and the same distance to the noise level. Fig. 1 illustrates the dif-
if the receive beamformer does not point to the maximal trans- ference between the two PSL measures. The former disregards the
mit gain accurately. In the performance evaluation section, we set channel noise level and sets all channel PSLs equal to the same
f a ∈ [−0.5, 0.5], meaning that sidelobes from target returns in all value, by suppressing PSLRG and PSLBG . In this case, sidelobe lev-
spatial directions will be taken into account. The maximization els of some spatial receive channels may be over the channel noise
over f a ∈ [−0.5, 0.5] will be approximated by a sufficiently fine level, whereas sidelobe levels of other spatial receive channels may
sampling interval over the angular frequency. be below the noise level. The second strategy sets channel PSLs
Based on the channel PSLs, we can define global PSLs accord- based on the same distance to the noise level. Dividing (22) by
ingly by (31) and then after normalization, we find that suppressing (25)
can result in channel PSLs with the same distance to channel noise
PSLAG = max PSLAC ( f a0 ) (28) level. In this case, spatial receive channels associated with a higher
f a0 ∈fa transmit beampattern peak are required to have a higher channel
PSLRG = max PSLRC ( f a0 ) (29) PSL. Meanwhile, spatial receive channels may have sidelobe levels
f a0 ∈fa all above or below the noise level.
It should be noted that without specific information of targets
and
from different spatial directions, we implicitly assume that the
Radar Cross Section (RCS) of targets in different spatial directions
PSLBG = max PSLBC ( f a0 ). (30)
f a0 ∈fa are statistically the same. In some situations especially in cognitive
radar, we may obtain some information about either the prevail-
The global PSLs are obtained using certain combinations of ing conditions or radar targets and then we can set sidelobe levels
channel PSLs. in different spatial diversity channels according to this informa-
tion. This is how the cognitive radar operates. Cognitive radars can
2.5. PSL and noise level adjust their operation strategies according to the information ac-
quired online but will not be discussed any further.
It is rarely noticed that the PSL definition should consider the Multiplying PSLAC by the receive beamforming attenuation fac-
noise level for transmit beampattern with unequal peaks. In MIMO tor, we define another channel PSL and global PSL by
radars with directional transmit beampatterns with unequal peaks,
the relationship between channel noise level and sidelobe level PSLDC ( f a0 ) = 20 log10 max |ρr ( f a0 ; f a ) ck ( f a0 ; f a ) / p m |
needs to be considered. For the MIMO LS algorithm with Rz = I k∈km
f a ∈[−0.5,0.5]
(32)
2
Here the subscript ‘A’ stands for “Angular waveform sidelobes”, ‘R’ stands for PSLDG = max PSLDC ( f a0 ). (33)
“Range compression sidelobes”, ‘B’ stands for “after the Beamforming operation”, ‘C’ f a0 ∈fa
means that the PSL is associated with a specific spatial receive Channel, ‘D’ intro-
duced later stands for “the same Distance to the noise level” and ‘G’ stands for “the If we intend to suppress PSLDG , sidelobe levels in different spa-
Global PSL.” tial receive channels will have PSLs that have the same distance to
 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635
Fig. 1. Comparison of two PSL setting strategies.
the channel noise level. It should be noted that we do not prefer
one strategy to the other and will present results obtained under
both strategies.
2.6. Transmit beampattern matching
With angular frequencies in f0 , we construct a matrix
RA (0) = AH
t (f0 ) Rs (0) At (f0 )
where
At (f0 ) = [at ( f 0 (1)), · · · , at ( f 0 ( N 0 ))]
is a matrix of transmitted steering vectors at angular frequencies
in f0 . The diagonal elements of RA (0) stand for the responses of
the transmit beampattern at f0 . Nondiagonal elements stand for
their mutual correlation without mutual shift.
With a desired transmit beampattern denoted by bd ∈ R N a ×1 ,
the transmit beampattern mismatch can be expressed by
bd − diag(RA (0))
where diag(·) with a square matrix entry denotes a vector of its
diagonal elements.
A desired transmit beampattern describes the shape of the
transmit beampattern but its power may have a mismatch with
real signal power. One may introduce an optimization parameter
to remove the ambiguity, but as transmit power satisfies the power
conservation law, we can build a constraint on bd by
 
H
1= p ( f a )d f a = a ( f a )Rs (0)a( f a )d f a
5
waveforms at k = 0 is difficult to suppress because they also de-
pend on the interval of angular frequencies in f0 . If the interval
of the selected angular frequencies is too small, there are many
terms to suppress such that the final sidelobe level may be poor.
Moreover, if Rs = I is desired, sidelobes at k = 0 are independent of
transmit waveforms and thus cannot be suppressed through wave-
form optimization. Even for directional transmit beampatterns, the
degree to which sidelobes can be suppressed is limited. Conse-
quently, we omit mutual correlation sidelobes at k = 0. Ignoring
sidelobes applies only for k = 0, we suppress only sidelobes at
shifted range bins.
2.7. Waveform optimization criteria
The PSL measures above were defined with continuous f a for
optimization, but no efficient optimization tool is available to solve
this problem. Therefore, we formulate the waveform design criteria
with f0 , fa and fm , all in the same form as
min max bd − diag(RA (0)), ea , em  (39)

where  denotes the phase matrix of S, i.e., S = exp( j ), j de-
notes the imaginary part, ea denotes auto and mutual correlation
sidelobes with fa , em denotes mutual correlation sidelobes be-
tween fa and fm , and  ·  denotes a kind of complex matrix norm.
(34)
Intended transmit waveforms are constant-modulus and are
constructed through S = exp( j ). The sidelobes and beampattern
mismatches can be combined in various ways through the norm
(35) operation. If  ·  stands for the 2−norm, ISL will be suppressed,
whereas we focus on the PSL, for which  ·  stands for the infin-
ity norm. One may also build other generalized norms to combine
those terms, which will not be discussed.
In order to suppress either PSLAG and PSLRG (no receive beam-
forming attenuation) or PSLDG and PSLBG (with receive beamform-
ing attenuation), we need to construct ea and em with fa and fm .
Without loss of generality, we assume that fa and fm have no
elements in common. Filling in different ea and em , we obtain dif-
(36)
ferent waveform design criteria.
If PSLBG is intended to be suppressed, we have
ea = vec [Ra (k) (diag(1/p(fa ))Wa )]k∈ka
(40)
em = vec [Rm (k) (diag(1/p(fa ))Wm )]k∈km
where auto and mutual correlation sidelobes are
Ra (k) = AH
t (fa ) Rs (k) At (fa )
(41)
Rm (k) = AH
t (fa ) Rs (k) At (fm )
diag(·) with a vector entry denotes a diagonal matrix with the vec-
1 
N0 tor entry in the diagonal, vec(·) denotes the vectorization operator,
1
≈ aH (f0 (i ))Rs (0)a(f0 (i )) = tr(RA (0)) (37) p(fa ) denotes the transmit beampattern gains at fa , and
N0 N0
i =1
[Wa ]i ,n = ρr (fa (i ); fa (n)) = ρr (fa (i ) − fa (n), 0)
1  (42)
≈ bd
[Wm ]i ,n = ρr (fa (i ); fm (n)) = ρr (fa (i ) − fm (n), 0)
N0
Consequently, we eliminate the power ambiguity of the desired are matrices of receive beamforming attenuation factors.
transmit beampattern by normalizing bd so that If PSLDG are intended to be suppressed, we have

bd = N 0 . (38) ea = vec (Ra (k) Wr )k∈ka
(43)
em = vec (Rm (k) Wr )k∈km .
Normalization can avoid optimizing an additional power fitting
parameter and thus may lead to a better optimization result. For comparison purposes, we still consider two waveform op-
Nondiagonal elements of RA (0) stand for mutual correlation timization criteria without receive beamforming. In order to sup-
sidelobes between angular waveforms at k = 0. As sidelobes, they press PSLRG , we use
are also undesirable and should be suppressed. In [10], sidelobes
at k = 0 are taken into account in the waveform optimization cri- ea = vec [diag(1/p(fa ))Ra (k)]k∈ka
(44)
terion. If we are interested in PSL measures, sidelobes of angular em = vec [diag(1/p(fa ))Rm (k)]k∈km
6 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635

and to order to suppress PSLAG , we use |sH (i )at ( f a0 )/ N t |2 ≤ s(i )2 · a( f a0 )/ N t 2 = N t (47)

ea = vec [Ra (k)]k∈ka where the equation holds if and only if s(i ) = exp( j ϕi )at ( f a0 ), the
(45) transmit beampattern
em = vec [Rm (k)]k∈km .

If the window wr is imposed on the receive beamforming oper-


ation, we obtain attenuation matrices for selected angular frequen-
cies, written as
[Wa ]i ,n = aH
r (fa (i ) − fa (n))wr / N r
(46)
[Wm ]i ,n = aH
r (fa (i ) − fm (n))wr / N r .
In (40) and (44), one needs to multiply Wa and Wm by 1/p(fa )
for normalization but it may require lots of computations. We can
replace this term by the expected transmit gain to save the com-
putation cost. In particular, for uniform transmit beampattern and
directional transmit beampattern with uniform peaks, this term
can be ignored as they are close for all fa .
Most waveform design criteria involving range sidelobe sup-
pression of constant-modulus waveforms have many local minima
and thus it is very difficult to reach the global minimum. We find
that the minimax algorithm based on the SQP method [23] is ef-
ficient in solving our optimization problems with a satisfactory
performance and convergence speed. The matlab function in use
is fminimax with option “Algorithm=SQP”. Each numerical result is
the best of solutions obtained by executing the Matlab function 5
times with different initial values, i.e., the one with the lowest PSL
of the 5 iteration runs. Therefore, all the waveform optimization
problems in this context will be solved based on this algorithm
with the same parameters, so that a fair comparison can be made
between different waveform design criteria.
3. Numerical results
3.1. Simulation configurations
In numerical results, waveforms for three kinds of transmit
beampatterns, i.e., mono peak, two uniform peaks and two un-
equal peaks, will be optimized. Uniform transmit beampatterns of
colocated MIMO radars are often criticized for their low trans-
mit gain and a coherent accumulation operation is often required
to improve the final SINR. If a target moves across a range bin,
the coherent accumulation may have insufficient time to gen-
erate a desirable SINR, or if we make coherent accumulation
across range bins, a sophisticated signal processing scheme is re-
quired [24,25]. Colocated MIMO radars can transmit either uniform
or directional transmit beampatterns, corresponding to nearly-
orthogonal or partially correlated waveforms. We first present
some results on highly directional transmit beampatterns like
phased-array radars. Then directional transmit beampatterns are
considered, first with uniform peaks and then with different peaks.
The antennas under consideration are transmit/receive dual func-
tional antennas. The antennas array is linear and composed of
10 half-wavelength spaced antennas. Each waveform is composed
of 128 codes.
3.2. Transmit beampattern with mono peak
Assume that the mono peak is located at f a = 0. For the
phased-array radar, the transmit gain p (0) in this direction is 10
with 10 transmit elements. For the colocated MIMO radar, it can
transmit high-directional transmit beampattern as well, but if the
desired transmit gain in the direction is 10, the transmit waveform
matrix S degenerates into a rank-one matrix, because
Nc
p ( f a0 ) = |sH (i )at ( f a0 )|2 / N t N c ≤ N t (48)
i =1
with the equation holding if and only if s(i ) = exp( j ϕi )at ( f a0 ) for
all i = 1, · · · , N c , i.e., S = saH
t ( f a0 ). In order to reach the maxi-
mum peak gain in certain direction, S should be a rank-one ma-
trix. In other words, the colocated MIMO radar degenerates into
a phased-array radar. If we force S to reach the peak gain as the
phased-array radar, the problem degenerates into optimizing s for
S = saHt ( f a0 ) [2]. We reduce the maximal transmit gain slightly to
extract some degrees of freedom and then continue run the opti-
mization process for the mono peak transmit beampattern. In this
case, transmit waveforms are different and then a MIMO radar op-
eration mode is obtained.
In order to reduce the number of variables to suppress, we use
f0 = {0} here. If the transmit power is sufficiently gathered in the
direction, transmit power allocated to other spatial directions, cor-
responding to the sidelobe region, will be suppressed naturally.
Based on this concept, we do not suppress sidelobes of the trans-
mit beampattern. Meanwhile, the beam width of the mono peak
is close to that of the phased-array radar. With transmit power
focused in a direction, we can deploy only one space-time range
compressor pointing to the direction fa = {0}. Moreover, we run
the SQP program with different fm settings and it is interesting to
find that fm = {0} is sufficient to obtain satisfactory results, i.e., a
result that is close to each other. The reason will be introduced
later.
At the current stage, we still ignore the effect of receive beam-
forming and run the optimization process with sidelobes in (45),
with a weighting factor of 5 imposed on the transmit beampattern
matching term. The transmit beampattern is shown in Fig. 2(a),
together with the desired transmit beampattern and the beam-
pattern of the phased-array radar. It can be seen that the two
transmit beampatterns have beampattern sidelobes close to each
other, but the colocated MIMO has a lower peak and a higher
transmit-beampattern sidelobe level, as a result of the transmit
gain relaxation.
Phased-array radars often transmit constant-modulus wave-
forms but angular waveform has amplitude modulation, as shown
in Fig. 2(b) for angular waveforms at f a = 0 Hz and f a = 0.15 Hz.
It can be seen that angular waveforms in different directions have
different signatures. As most of the energy is concentrated in direc-
tion f a = 0, the amplitudes of angular waveform at f a = 0 Hz are
10 (the maximum gain) for most codes and the proportion will in-
crease if we impose heavier weights on the transmit beampattern
matching term.
Range sidelobes of angular waveforms at f a = 0 Hz for two dif-
ferent waveforms optimized with weights 1 and 5 on the transmit
beampattern matching term are shown in Fig. 2(c). To be fair, we
also optimize a 128-codes constant-modulus waveform with the
same optimization tool. It can be seen that the heavier the weight,
the lower the range sidelobe level.
Angular waveforms in different spatial directions have differ-
ent range sidelobes, as shown in Fig. 2(d). Angular waveforms
away from f a = 0 Hz have much higher range sidelobes than those
around f a = 0 Hz. This is caused by our proper parameter settings
for the optimization. Although we optimize with only f a = 0 Hz,
waveforms in all spatial directions have close waveform signatures
and thus all have closely low range sidelobes. Therefore, it is rea-
sonable to set angular frequencies f0 , fa and fm commonly with a
single element of 0.
 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635 7

Fig. 2. Colocated MIMO radar with mono peak. (a) Desired and resulting transmit beampattern; (b) Angular waveforms at f a = 0 and f a = 0.15; (c) Range sidelobes of angular
waveforms at f a = 0; (d) Range sidelobes of angular waveforms from different directions; (e) Waveform signatures of phased-array radar in different spatial directions; (f)
Auto and mutual correlation sidelobes of the spatial receive channel at f a = 0 without Doppler concern.

Strictly speaking, a phased-array radar also transmits differ-
ent waveform signatures into different directions, but the differ-
ence is insignificant and can be omitted without performance loss
[26]. We go a step further to show the waveform signatures of a
phased-array radar transmitted into different directions in Fig. 2(e),
for f a = 0 Hz and f a = 0.2 Hz. From Fig. 2(e), there are blurs
near the code transition points. This is just a theoretical result
and those blurs stand for high frequency components, which will
be smoothed after passing band-pass circuits at the receive end.
Therefore, the performance loss caused by ignoring the difference
is trivial
Sidelobe outputs of all angular waveforms in the spatial receive
channel for f a = 0 Hz, corresponding to ck (0, f a ), fa ∈ [−0.5, 0.5],
are shown in Fig. 2(f). Although the angular waveforms in differ-
ent spatial directions have different signatures and range sidelobes,
their sidelobe outputs in the spatial receive channel have a low
level. This is because other spatial directions have a low transmit
power gain that results in low sidelobes.
8 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635
A heavier weight on the transmit beampattern matching term
can make the transmit power focused mainly into the peak di-
rection. In this case, the rank of S is close to one and angular
waveforms transmitted into different spatial directions have sig-
natures close to each other. If the rank is one, all spatial directions
will have the same signature and the same range sidelobe level.
Meanwhile, with close signatures, they have low mutual corre-
lation sidelobes at k = 0. Consequently, once the angular wave-
form at f a = 0 Hz has a low sidelobe level, other angular wave-
forms will inherent its low range sidelobes. This is the reason
why we set fm = 0 but still obtain low mutual correlation side-
lobes.
In particular, if the weight imposed on transmit beampattern
matching tapers off, the transmit gain toward the direction will
decrease but the sidelobe level will improve significantly. For in-
stance, if we impose a weight 0.5, we can obtain a PSLDG =
−36.24 dB. As an extreme, if we totally remove the transmit beam-
pattern matching pursuit, we can obtain an angular waveform with
a range sidelobe level lower than −120 dB, which has been intro-
duced in [26].
3.3. Transmit beampattern with two uniform peaks
The receive beamforming effect will be considered subse-
quently. Consider a desired transmit beampattern with two peaks
at fa = {−0.3, 0.3} Hz with the same gain. Other spatial regions
are considered as sidelobes. In this case, PSL measures, both chan-
nel PSL (PSLAC , PSLRC and PSLBC ) and global channel PSLs (PSLAG ,
PSLRG and PSLBC ), are close to each other. Therefore, we run the
optimization process with (44) that has a low computational cost.
Here a desired transmit beampattern is described by a gain and
a beam width. For the N t elements array, the first null width is
1/ N t . Therefore, we set f0 = [−0.4, −0.3, −0.2, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4]T Hz
and bd = [0, 5, 0, 0, 5, 0]T . For the two peaks, the receive end de-
ploys two range compressors regarding fa = [−0.3, 0.3]T Hz and
real target returns are simulated by a 20-elements fm ranging from
−0.475 Hz to 0.475 Hz, with spacing 0.05 Hz.
With (44), we obtain a transmit beampattern shown in Fig. 3(a).
The resulting beampattern matches the desirable one well at the
anchor points, i.e., f0 . The transmit power has been efficiently al-
located into expected directions, resulting in low sidelobes of the
transmit beampattern. Waveform signatures in f0 are shown to-
gether with their sum in Fig. 3(b). It can be seen that their sum in
the temporal dimension is close to a constant. That means that the
transmit power switches between two directions, occupying nearly
all the time slots.
Assume that two spatial receive channels are deployed to deal
with returns from two different spatial directions fa . Range com-
pression sidelobes of angular waveforms at fm in two channels
are stacked and shown together in Fig. 3(c). Two channel PSLs are
around −24.10 dB (three channel PSLs are close to each other).
In practice, real target returns may come from any direction and
Fig. 3(d) shows sidelobe outputs of angular waveforms from more
spatial directions, with a finer spacing of 0.01 Hz. It can be seen
that sidelobes around fm are suppressed and the resulting PSLRC =
−23.92 dB, with a 0.18 dB increase. Moreover, the final sidelobe
level is mainly determined by auto correlation sidelobes, which are
much higher than cross correlation sidelobes.
Sidelobe level in Fig. 3(d) is a bit higher than Fig. 3(c) of side-
lobes at optimization ticks. To show this fact more clearly, we
calculate the PSL over the range for the sidelobes in Figs. 3(c-d),
excluding k = 0 parts, i.e.,
r ( f a0 , f a ) = max rk ( f a0 , f a ). (49)
k∈km
Results are shown in Fig. 3(e), wherein the transmit beampat-
tern is also presented. The sidelobe level depends heavily on the
weight on the transmit beampattern matching. It can be seen that
the fine spacing has sufficiently represented angular waveforms
from all spatial directions.
Consider a receive array also with 10 half-wavelength spaced
elements and then calculate sidelobes after the receive beamform-
ing operation with the MIMO LS weight as ar ( f a0 )/ N r , yielding
ρ ( f a0 , f a ) = max ρk ( f a0 , f a ). (50)
k∈km
The attenuation factor is calculated according to (17). The result is
shown in Fig. 3(f). It can be seen that the cross correlation side-
lobes are efficiently suppressed after receive beamforming. It is
obvious that the sidelobe level over the angular frequency dimen-
sion is nonuniform. In addition to receive beamforming, sidelobes
can reach a lower level. From Figs. 3(e-f), the sidelobe level is
mainly determined by auto correlation sidelobes, instead of mutual
correlation sidelobes. Consequently, using the same concept as in
[27], we ignore cross correlation sidelobes of angular waveforms
but focus merely on suppressing sidelobes around two mainlobes,
through setting fm = [−0.35, −0.25, 0.25, 0.35]T .
With a lighter weight 0.02 on the transmit beampattern match-
ing term, we run the optimization process with (43) and obtain
Fig. 4(a) that shows sidelobe outputs of two spatial receive chan-
nels stacked together, where the receive beamforming effect is not
taken into account. The optimized PSL is −25.4 dB, with a 1.2 dB
decrease in contrast to waveform design without receive beam-
formng. Fig. 4(b) shows PSL over range for sidelobes in two receive
channels, without the receive beamforming effect. Fig. 4(b) clearly
indicates that range sidelobes are still mainly determined by auto
correlation sidelobes, though cross correlation sidelobes are not
suppressed in the optimization criterion. Therefore, ignoring mu-
tual correlation sidelobes does not lead to high-level mutual corre-
lation sidelobes and the setting is justified. Meanwhile, real range
PSLs have two shallow notches around −0.3 Hz and 0.3 Hz, indi-
cating that although quantization of the angular frequency through
a few angular waveforms will result in the sidelobe increase for
real target returns from all possible spatial directions, the degree
of increase can be controlled to an acceptable level by proper pa-
rameter settings.
Attenuated by the MIMO LS algorithm, sidelobe outputs of more
angular waveforms in the two channels are stacked and shown in
Fig. 4(c), indicating that receive beamforming has made the mu-
tual correlation sidelobes much lower than the auto correlation
sidelobes. The value of PSL over range can be found in Fig. 4(d).
As receive beamforming does suppress auto correlation sidelobes,
the final PSL is identical to that before receive beamforming. In
Fig. 4(b), mutual correlation between angular waveforms around
two transmit beampattern peaks are comparable to the auto corre-
lation sidelobes, but in Fig. 4(d), it can be seen that mutual corre-
lation sidelobes between returns in directions associated with the
two peaks have been efficiently suppressed, to an extent compara-
ble to mutual correlation sidelobes, i.e., around −45 dB. Therefore,
the only obstacle for a lower global sidelobe level is auto correla-
tion sidelobes.
Table 1 lists all sidelobe measures of designed waveforms in
this section.
3.4. Transmit beampattern with two unequal peaks: Case I
For directional transmit beampattern with identical peaks,
range sidelobe measures are close to each other. Noise levels in
two channels are close to each other as well. In the following, we
still consider desired transmit beampattern with two peaks but
 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635 9

Fig. 3. Transmit beampattern with two uniform peaks. (a) Desired and resulting transmit beampattern; (b) Angular waveforms at f a = −0.3 and f a = 0.3; (c) Range sidelobes
at angular frequencies for optimization; (d) Range sidelobes at the angular frequencies; (e) PSL over the range without receive beamforming; (f) PSL over range after receive
beamforming.

allocate different powers to the two peaks. In this case, noise lev-
els in two spatial receive channels become different and then one
needs to choose from those PSL definitions.
Assume that the two peaks of the desired transmit beam-
pattern are located at fa = [−0.3, 0.3]T Hz, with a power ratio
3 : 1. We first suppress PSLBG and run the optimization process
with (40), still with f0 = [−0.4, −0.3, −0.2, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4]T Hz and
bd = [0, 75, 0, 0, 25, 0]T . Real target returns are from −0.475 Hz to
0.475 Hz with spacing 0.05 Hz by assumption.
The resulting transmit beampattern is shown in Fig. 5(a), in-
dicating that the resulting transmit beampattern agrees well with
the desired one. The resulting power ratio of two peaks is 3.3 : 1,
a bit mismatch with the desirable one. As most of the power has
been concentrated on two peaks, signal power in the sidelobe re-
10 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635

Fig. 4. Transmit beampattern with two uniform peaks. (a) Optimized sidelobes in two spatial receive channels; (b) PSL over range for two channels without receive beam-
forming; (c) Sidelobe outputs in two channels with receive beamforming; (d) PSL over range for two channels with receive beamforming.

Table 1
PSL measures of optimization results.

Criterion parameters RB Channel 1/Channel 2/Overall, dB

peak ratio, N 0 , N a , N m Y/N ÷ Max gain ÷ Channel gain
Optimization, Real Optimization, Real
Eq. (45), Fig. 2 N −33.58/NA/−33.58,−33.58/NA/−33.58 −33.58/NA/−33.58,−33.58/NA/−33.58
1 : 0, 1, 1, 1 Y −36.24/NA/−36.24,−35.52/NA/−35.52 −36.24/NA/−36.24, −35.52/NA/−35.52

Eq. (44), Fig. 3 N −24.10/−24.10/−24.10,−23.92/−23.95/−23.92 −24.10/−24.10/−24.10, −23.92/−23.95/−23.92

1 : 1, 6, 2, 20 Y −24.10/−24.10/−24.10,−24.01/−24.03/−24.01 −24.10/−24.10/−24.10,−24.01/−24.03/−24.01

Eq. (43), Fig. 4 N −25.38/−25.38/−25.38,−24.99/−25.00/−24.99 −25.38/−25.38/−25.38,−24.99/−25.00/−24.99

1 : 1, 6, 2, 6 Y −25.38/−25.38/−25.38,−25.18/−25.23/−25.18 −25.38/−25.38/−25.38,−25.18/−25.23/−25.18

Eq. (40), Fig. 5 N −24.11/−24.11/−24.11,−24.05/−24.10/−13.58 −24.11/−13.59/−13.59,−24.05/−13.58/−13.58

3 : 1, 6, 2, 20 Y −38.05/−47.59/−38.05,−37.43/−45.16/−37.43 −38.05/−37.07/−37.07,−37.43/−34.63/−34.63

Eq. (43), Figs. 6(a-c) N −21.83/−21.83/−21.83,−21.82/−21.83/−21.82 −21.83/−11.16/−11.16,−21.82/−11.16/−11.16

3 : 1, 6, 2, 20 Y −44.27/−44.27/−44.27,−43.29/−42.23/−42.23 −44.27/−33.60/−33.60,−43.29/−31.56/−31.56

Eq. (43), Fig. 6(d) N −21.86/−21.86/−21.86,−21.85/−21.86/−21.85 −21.86/−11.02/−11.02,−21.85/−11.02/−11.02

3 : 1, 6, 2, 20 Y −44.49/−42.50/−45.19,−43.62/−42.49/−42.49 −44.49/−31.67/−31.67,−43.62/−31.66/−31.66


gions is controlled to a low level. Therefore, our mechanism to p ( f a0 )
form multiple peaks of transmit beampattern works well. ck ( f a0 , f a )/ p ( f a0 ) p ( f a ) = rk ( f a0 , f a ) (51)
p( f a )
For MIMO radar waveform optimization, the way to normal-
ize sidelobes ck ( f a0 ; f a ) is critical. Here PSLRC ( f a ) is normalized by with k ∈ km , f a0 ∈ f0 , and f a ∈ fm . It stems from a strict mathe-
p ( f a0 ) and PSLAC ( f a ) by p m . In practice, there is another common matical definition of waveform mutual correlation and will never
but unsuitable method to normalize sidelobes, given by exceed one.
 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635

Fig. 5. Transmit beampattern with two uniform peaks. (a) Desirable and resulting transmit beampatterns; (b) Mathematical definition of mutual correlation sidelobes ck ( f a0 , f a )/ p ( f a0 ) p ( f a ) for f a0 = 0 and f a0 = 0.15 stacked
together; (c) Range compression sidelobes rk ( f a0 , f a ) for f a0 = 0 and f a0 = 0.15 stacked together; (d) Angular waveform sidelobes ck ( f a0 , f a ), without receive beamforming; (e) Peak value over range excluding k = 0 for range
compression sidelobes, without receive beamforming; (f) Peak value over range excluding k = 0 for angular waveform sidelobes, without receive beamforming; (g) Range compression sidelobes with receive beamforming; (h)
Angular waveform sidelobes with receive beamforming; (i) Peak value over range excluding k = 0 for range compression sidelobes, with receive beamforming; (j) Peak value over range excluding k = 0 for angular waveform
sidelobes, with receive beamforming.

11
12 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635
Fig. 6. Transmit beampattern with two uniform peaks. (a) Sidelobes of angular waveforms in two channels at optimization ticks; (b) Sidelobes of angular waveforms at more
angular frequencies; (c) Peak sidelobes over range in two channels; (d) Peak sidelobes over range for waveforms optimized with a Hamming window imposed on receive
beamforming.
For the waveforms at hand, the sidelobes in definition (51) are
shown in Fig. 5(b), indicating that sidelobes are very high under
this measure. This sidelobe definition overweights mutual correla-
tion sidelobes because transmit gains at fa , associated with spatial
receive channels, are always higher than those at fm that stands
for other spatial directions. In practice, targets from spatial regions
that are not of interest will also have low power returns in a sta-
tistical sense. That is the reason why we pay less attention on this
sidelobe definition.
Next, range compression sidelobes rk ( f a0 , f a ) are shown in
Fig. 5(c) and angular waveform sidelobes ck ( f a0 , f a ) in Fig. 5(d),
both for k ∈ km , f a0 ∈ f0 , f a ∈ fm . For the spatial receive chan-
nels regarding the lower peak, sidelobe level are different from
Fig. 5(c) and Fig. 5(d), because two sidelobe measures impose
different weights over sidelobes outputs in the 0.3 Hz channel.
From Figs. 5(b-d), it can be clearly seen that under different side-
lobe measures, mutual correlation sidelobes are different. There-
fore, it is important to select reasonable sidelobe measures and it
is also the reason why we pay so much attention on PSL defini-
tions.
Numerical values of sidelobe levels are shown in Figs. 5(e-f),
where Fig. 5(e) presents peak sidelobes over range excluding k = 0
for range compression sidelobes in Fig. 5(c), and Fig. 5(f) presents
peak sidelobes over range excluding k = 0 for angular waveform
sidelobes in Fig. 5(d). The resulting transmit beampattern is also
presented for comparison purpose. It is obvious that the two fig-
ures differ in the sidelobe outputs in the spatial receive channel re-
garding f a = 0.3 Hz. The power ratio of the two peaks 3.3 : 1 here
results in a 10.4 dB difference in the channel PSL at f a = 0.3 Hz.
Auto correlation sidelobes in both figures are lower than mutual
correlation sidelobes, because the waveform optimization criterion
has taken the receive beamforming effect into account but the op-
eration is not considered in Figs. 5(c-f).
In addition to receive beamforming with the 10-element re-
ceive array used in waveform optimization, sidelobes measured
by ρk ( f a0 ; f a ) are shown in Fig. 5(g), and sidelobes measured by
ρr ( f a0 ; f a ) · ck ( f a0 ; f a ) in Fig. 5(h), where no window is imposed
at receive beamforming.
In Figs. 5(g-h), sidelobes at different angular frequencies are
flatter than those in Figs. 5(c-d), as a result of waveform optimiza-
tion. The channel PSL is about −38 dB and the receive beamform-
ing results in a 12.7 dB drop of the PSL. Therefore, a well-designed
waveform optimization criterion can also result in a good wave-
form optimization result.
Peak sidelobes over range excluding k = 0 for sidelobes in
Figs. 5(g-h) are shown in Figs. 5(i-j), respectively. The waveform
optimization criterion with (40), tending to suppress PSLBG , gives
rise to close sidelobe outputs in Fig. 5(i). If the sidelobes are nor-
malized by peak gain as in Fig. 5(j), sidelobes in two different
spatial receive channels are not equivalent anymore. Specifically, at
optimization points, the PSL in the 0.3 Hz channel is −47.59 dB,
 S. Zhou et al. / Digital Signal Processing 98 (2020) 102635
about 10 dB lower than that in the −0.3 Hz channel. That is a
significant difference.
Waveform optimization with (40) tends to make different chan-
nels yield the same channel PSL. The following part will discuss
waveform optimization results with (43), which tends to force PSLs
of different channels to have the same distance to the noise level.
3.5. For transmit beampattern with two unequal peaks: Case II
On the same transmit/array, we optimize with (43), under the
same parameter settings as those used to obtain Fig. 5. The trans-
mit beampattern is close to Fig. 5(a) and thus is omitted here.
According to Table 1, PSLDG is −42.23 dB, 10.7 dB lower than
PSLBG = −31.56 dB. Compared to Fig. 5, PSLBG rises by 3.1 dB but
PSLDG drops by 4.8 dB. Fig. 6(a) presents angular waveform side-
lobes attenuated by receive beamforming at angular frequencies
fm .
From Table 1, sidelobes beyond selected angular frequencies
may rise a bit. In Fig. 5, real PSLBG is 2.4 dB higher than the opti-
mization outcome. Fig. 6(b) shows sidelobes in two channels with
a much finer sampling frequency of the angular frequency. Explicit
values are shown in Fig. 6(c) for peak sidelobes over range exclud-
ing k = 0. In Fig. 6(c), two PSL measures are equivalent for the
−0.3 Hz channel, but are different for the 0.3 Hz channel. There-
fore, we plot them together in Fig. 6(c).
As mentioned above, PSLBG and PSLDG have different outcomes.
If sufficiently suppressed, the former will force all spatial receive
channels associated with transmit beampattern peaks to have the
same channel PSL, but the latter will make channel PSLs have the
same distance to the noise distance. The former may have two
channels with one sidelobe level above the noise level but the
other below the noise level. Therefore, the latter seems better, but
the choice should be left for users in accordance to actual need in
the field. Moreover, users may suggest other waveform criteria and
this paper point out that one should note the rule of noise level in
those criteria.
In the receive beamforming process, we may impose a win-
dow to release more degrees of freedom for a lower global side-
lobe level. When the Hamming window is imposed, we run the
optimization processing with (43) and then obtain a PSLDG =
−42.49 dB, with a 0.26 dB drop from the optimization result with-
out a window. At optimized angular frequencies, the PSL drops
by 0.92 dB to −45.19 dB. Peak sidelobes over range are shown
in Fig. 6(d). It can be seen that the imposed window helps to
suppress the sidelobe level further, but the PSL drop is not so
significant, mainly because from Figs. 6(c-d), the sidelobe level is
basically determined by auto correlation sidelobes. Therefore, the
degrees of freedom that can be extracted from mutual correlation
is limited in this case even for transmit/receive antenna arrays.
4. Conclusion and discussion
This paper aimed at transmit waveform optimization for colo-
cated MIMO radars in conjunction with receive array processing.
Waveform design criteria were developed with implementation
concerns. An attenuation factor was introduced and incorporated
into several waveform optimization criteria. We also defined three
groups of angular frequencies to develop the waveform design cri-
teria, which also contributes to lower PSL outcomes. We defined
several sidelobes measures for colocated MIMO radars and pointed
out that one should notice the distance from the sidelobe level to
the noise level when desired transmit beampattern have multiple
peaks of different amplitudes. Two different PSL setting strategies
were discussed, namely PSLBG and PSLDG . Several waveform opti-
mization criteria were presented and numerical results were given
for different scenarios, indicating that the receive beamforming
13
attenuation factor results in a significant PSL drop to the optimiza-
tion result. The Doppler problem is not considered but it is not
difficult to generalize the criteria in case of Doppler mismatches.
The SQP algorithm can be replaced by the L-BFGS algorithm and
the ADMM algorithm for a better performance output.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
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Shenghua Zhou received the B.Eng. and Ph.D. De-
grees from Xidian University in 2005 and 2011, re-
spectively. He is currently an associate professor in
National Laboratory of Radar Signal Processing at Xi-
dian University. His research interests include but are
not limited to distributed detection, colocated MIMO
radar and dual function radar.
Jing Lu received the B.Sc. degree in engineering
from Xidian University in 2018. He is currently pur-
suing the M.Sc. degree in signal processing with the
National Laboratory of Radar Signal Processing, Xid-
ian University. His research interests include statistical
signal processing, multi-frame detection, and quanti-
tative fusion detection.
Pramod K. Varshney received the B.S. degree
(Hons.) in electrical engineering and computer sci-
ence and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, IL, USA, in 1972, 1974, and 1976, respec-
tively. Since 1976, he has been with Syracuse Uni-
versity, Syracuse, NY, USA, where he is currently a
Distinguished Professor of electrical engineering and
computer science and the Director of the Center for
Advanced Systems and Engineering. He served as an Associate Chair for
the Department from 1993 to 1996. He is also an Adjunct Professor of ra-
diology with Upstate Medical University, Syracuse. He has authored a book
Distributed Detection and Data Fusion. His current research interests are
in distributed sensor networks and data fusion, detection and estimation
theory, wireless communications, image processing, radar signal process-
ing, and remote sensing. He was elected to the grade of fellow of the IEEE
in 1997 for his contributions in the area of distributed detection and data
fusion. He was the President of the International Society of Information
Fusion in 2001. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal on Advances in
Information Fusion.
Jianlai Wang received the Ph.D. degree from the
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2011.
He is currently a Senior Engineer with the China
Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, Beijing, China.
His research interests include radar automatic target
detection and signal processing.
Hui Ma was born in Hebei, China, in 1989. She re-
ceived the B.Sc. degrees in electronic and information
engineering, in 2009, and the Ph.D. degree in elec-
tromagnetics and microwave technology from Beihang
University, Beijing, China, in 2015. In 2012, she was
a visiting Ph.D. student with the University of Birm-
ingham, Birmingham, U.K., where she continued as a
Research Fellow, since 2015, under the grants funded
by the European Space Agency. She is currently a Lec-
turer with the National Laboratory of Radar Signal Processing, Xidian
University, Xi’an, China. Her research interests include multi-static radar,
passive radar, radar imaging, and signal processing.
Hongwei Liu received the B.Eng. degree in elec-
tronic engineering from the Dalian University of Tech-
nology, in 1992, and the M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in
electronic engineering from Xidian University, Xi’an,
China, in 1995 and 1999, respectively, where he is
currently the Director and a Professor with the Na-
tional Laboratory of Radar Signal Processing. His re-
search interests include radar automatic target recog-
nition, radar signal processing, and adaptive signal
processing.