MIMO radar signal design to improve the MIMO ambiguity function via maximizing its peak

•Transmit signals are designed to maximize the ambiguity function׳s peak of a WS-MIMO radar.•Signal design is done for three cases of single target, multi-target, and prioritized ambiguity function.•It is shown that in spite of increasing the number of antennas of MIMO radar, signal design does not provide diversity gain.•Through simulations, it is shown that better performance can be achieved by the proposed signal design to maximize the AF׳s peak.

One of the important obstacles in MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) radars is the issue of designing proper transmit signals. Indeed, the capability of signal design is a significant advantage in MIMO radars, through which, the system can achieve much better performance. Many different aspects of this performance improvement have been considered yet, and the transmit signals have been designed to attain such goal, e.g., getting higher SNR or better detector׳s performance at the receiver. However, an important tool for evaluating the radar׳s performance is its ambiguity function. In this paper, we consider the problem of transmit signal design, in order to optimize the ambiguity function of a distributed MIMO radar system via maximizing its peak.