The development of true space-time transmit signals has been shown to significantly improve the efficacy of communications systems, and there is every reason to believe that similar results are possible for radar sensors as well. The problem is how to construct an effective space-time transmit signal for radar applications. It was demonstrated that by expanding a general space-time transmit function as a superposition of orthogonal basis functions, the problem is simplified to finding an optimal transmit data vector. This allows for the direct implementation of linear algebraic techniques (e.g., eigen analysis) for determining solutions for many optimality criteria and likewise allows for direct implementation of iterative and search techniques. Moreover, this structure allows for optimal solutions to be found for any radar mode (e.g., SAR, GMTI) hybrid mode by simply classifying measurement subspaces as either target or clutter.

Inspec keywords: search problems; iterative methods; vectors; radar clutter; radar signal processing

Other keywords: optimal transmit data vector; radar sensor; multimode radar; communications system; linear algebraic technique; iterative technique; clutter; search technique; optimal space-time transmit signal; orthogonal basis function

Subjects: Interpolation and function approximation (numerical analysis); Optimisation techniques; Algebra; Radar equipment, systems and applications; Signal processing and detection