A novel joint parameter estimation method based on fractional ambiguity function in bistatic multiple-input multiple-output radar system

•A new signal model for parameter estimation of the target in bistatic MIMO radar is proposed.•The fractional ambiguity function is utilized to estimate Doppler frequency parameters in the FRFT domain.•Two sub-array models are constructed based on the peak of the fractional cross-ambiguity function.•Two new algorithms referred to as FCAF-MUSIC and FCAF-ESPRIT are proposed to estimate the DOA and DOD.

Due to the three dimensional motion characteristics of the target, the received scattering signal often contains a cubic term in its phase function. The existing signal model is not appropriate to approximate parameters in this case. In this paper, we propose a new signal model to accurately estimate parameters of the target. We use a novel approach, the fractional ambiguity function, to estimate Doppler frequency parameters in the fractional Fourier transform domain. Furthermore, we also develop two sub-array models to accurately estimate the direction-of-departure and direction-of-arrival by employing the proposed fractional cross-ambiguity function based MUSIC (FCAF-MUSIC) algorithm and the fractional cross-ambiguity function based ESPRIT (FCAF-ESPRIT) algorithm. Simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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