Abstract：This paper studies the problem of signal detection in clutter with unknown statistical properties for the airborne MIMO radars. Firstly, a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test Detector (GLRTD) is proposed to improve the detection performance exploiting the spatial diversity of MIMO radar, and the theoretical expression is derived for the detection performance. Secondly, a simplified GLRTD is derived based on the block diagonal property of clutter covariance matrix to reduce both the computational complexity and the secondary range cell numbers required for clutter covariance estimation, and a closed form expression of the detection performance is given for the special case of two receiver radar elements. The results show that both proposed detectors have CFAR with respect to the covariance matrix of clutter, and can effectively detect targets in clutter.
2009, Vol. 31 
