MIMO radar for through-wall target identification in single and two wall scenarios

MIMO radar provides improvement over traditional phased array radars for through wall imaging. By transmitting independent waveforms from a transmit array to a receive array an effective virtual array is created. This array has improved degrees of freedom over phased arrays and mono-static MIMO systems. This virtual array allows us to achieve the same effective aperture length as a phased array with less elements because the virtual array can be described as the convolution of transmit and receive array positions. In addition, data from multiple walls of the same room can be used to collect target information. If two walls are perpendicular to each other and the geometry of transmit and receive arrays is known, then data can be processed independently of each other. Since the geometry of the arrays is known, a target scene can be created where the two data sets overlap. The overlapped scene can then be processed so that image artifacts that do not correlate between the data sets can be excised. The result gives improved target detection, reduction in false alarms, robustness to noise, and robustness against errors such as improperly aligned antennas.