Sparse Signal Representation

for MIMO Radar Imaging

William Roberts, Tarik Yardibi, Jian Li and Xing Tan Petre Stoica
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Information Technology
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611 Uppsala University, Sweden, SE-751 05

AbstractMIMO radar can achieve superior performance the Euclidean norm, ()T denotes the transpose, () denotes
over the conventional phased-array radar through waveform the conjugate transpose, vec() denotes the vector operation,
diversity. Considerations in transmit waveform and receive lter and I denotes an identity matrix of appropriate dimension.
design are central to attaining improved performance through a
MIMO system. Moreover, adaptive array techniques are needed
II. P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
to improve accuracy, resolution and to further provide inter-
ference suppression. Recently, the weighted least-squares based Consider a MIMO radar system with M transmit antennas
iterative adaptive approach (IAA), a non-parametric and user and N receive antennas. Let X C LM consist of the
parameter-free method was shown to provide good performance
for array processing. In this paper, we demonstrate how IAA
transmitted signals with length L. To accommodate the signal
can be extended for MIMO radar applications. Our simulations model below, we let
show that IAA outperforms other well-established methods in  
X
the eld. X = , (1)

I. I NTRODUCTION where is a (P 1) M matrix of zeros, and (P 1)
In traditional phased-array radar systems, a set of antennas refers to the maximum delay in sampling intervals for which
transmit scaled versions of a single waveform. On the other impinging signals from neighboring range bins might interfere
hand, a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar system with the signal of interest.
transmits a set of different, possibly orthogonal, waveforms For a radar collecting data from N positions, the received
[1]. For a MIMO system with colocated antennas, several signal from collection position n can be represented by
benets are afforded through this waveform diversity. Notably, Kp
P
 1 
MIMO radar techniques have been shown to offer higher reso-
D (n) = p,k ak (n)bTk (n)X Jp + E (n) , (2)
lution for target estimation, see, e.g., [2], [3], better sensitivity
p=0 k=1
[4], and improved parameter identiability [5]. In addition,
optimization of the transmit waveforms can be performed to for n = 1, . . . , N , where Kp refers to the number of scatterers
both increase exibility in beampattern design and improve in a particular range bin and {E(n)} represent the noise.
target detection capabilities, see, e.g., [6]-[12]. The terms {ak (n)} and {bk (n)} refer to the receive and
Moreover, as a MIMO radar transmits different waveforms, transmit steering vectors, respectively, as functions of n and
reected signals from scattering points will lack coherency, the complex amplitudes of reecting targets are represented
which facilitates the application of adaptive array techniques by the terms in {p,k }. Finally, Jp R(L+P 1)(L+P 1) is
[5], [13]. When the array steering vectors are accurately a shift matrix used to temporally align the received signals
known, existing approaches, such as CAPON and APES, from different range bins, which can be written as
have been shown to offer increased resolution and better p+1

interference rejection [14], [15]. However, when high levels 

1 0
of noise or model errors are present, the performance of these
.
existing adaptive approaches can degrade signicantly [15]. ..
Jp = . (3)
Recently, a non-parametric and user parameter-free method 1

described as the iterative adaptive approach (IAA) was pro-
posed in array processing and other sensing applications [16], 0
[17]. In this paper, we extend IAA to the MIMO synthetic
aperture radar (SAR) imaging case. To further simplify notation, let

Notation: We denote vectors and matrices by boldface vec(D (1))
lowercase and uppercase letters, respectively.  2 denotes ..
d= . , (4)
This material is based upon work supported in part by the SMART vec(D (N ))
fellowship program, the Army Research Ofce under Grant No. W911NF-
07-1-0450, the Ofce of Naval Research under Grant No. N00014-07-1-0293, yp,k (n) = vec(ak (n)bTk (n)X Jp ),
the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CCF-0634786, and the
Swedish Research Council (VR). Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and
recommendations are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed
yp,k (1)
..
by the United States Government.
Please address all correspondence to Jian Li. Phone:(352) 392-2642; Fax:
yp,k = . , (5)
(352) 392-0044; Email: li@dsp.u.edu. yp,k (N )

978-1-4244-2941-7/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE 609 Asilomar 2008

 TABLE I
IAA FOR MIMO R ADAR . Minimization of (9) yields the updated target estimate:

yp,k Q1
p,k d
initialize p,k = Q1 y
, (11)
(0)
Given {p,k }, p = 0, 1, , P 1, k = 1, 2, , Kp
yp,k p,k p,k
2(0)
Let {l } = 0, l = 1, 2, , N N (L + P 1) for p = 0, , P 1 and k = 1, , Kp . We can replace Q1
p,k
repeat in (11) with R1 by using the matrix inversion lemma, which
P Kp
1 X
X can be computed only once for all of the target estimates at a
R= |p,k |2 yp,k yp,k

+
p=0 k=1 given iteration, hence saving computation.
for p = 0, 1, , P 1, k = 1, 2, , Kp In a similar fashion, the noise powers can be estimated

yp,k R1 d using,
p,k = R1 y  1 2
yp,k p,k v R d
end for l2 =  l 1  , (12)
for l = 1, 2, , N N (L + P 1)
vl R vl

v R1 d 2
l2 = vl R1 v for l = 1, 2, , N N (L + P 1) with vl denoting the lth
l l N N (L+P 1) 2
end for
column of IN N (L+P 1) since = l=1 l vl vl .
until (a certain number of iterations is reached) The above steps are then repeated using the updated target
estimates for a set number of iterations. is initialized by
delay-and-sum (DAS) and is initialized as all zeros1 For
most practical applications, approximate convergence occurs
and nally Y = [y0,1 , , y0,K0 , y1,1 , , yP 1,KP 1 ]. after typically no more than 10 iterations. The algorithm is
Then, (2) can be expressed as summarized in Table 1.
d = Y + e, (6) B. Incorporating BIC
T In order to produce sparsity in the IAA result, we follow the
where = [0,1 , , 0,K0 , 1,1 , , P 1,KP 1 ] and
approach taken in [16], [17] by incorporating a model order
vec(E (1)) selection tool known as the Bayesian information criterion
.. (BIC) [18].
e= . . (7)
Given the rened target estimates from IAA, the approach
vec(E (N ))
works by rst selecting the target which yields the minimum
The problem of interest, then, is to accurately estimate the BIC value:
target reection coefcients from the measurements d and 
BIC() = 2N N (L + P 1)  d yp,k p,k 22
known Y.
kJp ()

III. I TERATIVE A DAPTIVE A PPROACH + 3ln(2N N (L + P 1)) , (13)

In this section, we will show how IAA can be extended to where refers to the number of targets currently selected (set
deal with MIMO SAR imaging. For more details, please refer at one for the rst iteration), and Jp () denotes the set of
to the derivation given in [16]. chosen targets in range bin p for the iteration with targets.
The algorithm then searches for a second target so that, along
A. IAA Formulation with the rst chosen peak, the BIC value in (13) is again
Given some initial estimates for the reection coefcients minimal. In this way, the method continues to incorporate
, which can be obtained using any data-dependent or data- targets into a chosen set until the BIC value cannot be further
independent approach, the rst step is to compute the covari- decreased. To produce a sparse result, all reection coefcients
ance matrix, R, of the received signal which is given by that are not included in the chosen set are assumed not to lie
on the true target and are made equal to zero.
P Kp
1 

R= |p,k |2 yp,k yp,k

+, (8) IV. N UMERICAL E XAMPLES
p=0 k=1 In the following examples, we will compare the perfor-
mance of IAA against several other estimators, including DAS,
where is a diagonal matrix with the noise power es-
N N (L+P 1) CAPON, APES and CAPES [14].
timates {l2 }l=1 on its diagonal. Note that R For each case, our MIMO radar will consist of a uniform
(N N (L+P 1))(N N (L+P 1))
C . Using this estimate for R, we linear array with M = 5 transmit antennas and N = 5 receive
minimize the following weighted least squares cost function antennas. The transmit and receive antennas will be spaced
with respect to the reection coefcient, p,k , of the target of at 2.5 and 0.5 wavelengths, respectively, so that effectively
interest: we will be using an M N = 25 antenna lled virtual array.
We will assume additive white thermal noise. The true target
 d p,k yp,k 2Q1 , (9) is shown in Figure 1(a); it consists of P = 12 range bins
p,k
with 2 separation between scatterers. At the receiver end, a
where x2A = xH Ax and Qp,k is the covariance matrix of matched lter is used by DAS, CAPON and APES for range
the interference to the target p,k and is given by compression.
Qp,k = R |p,k |2 yp,k yp,k

. (10) 1A small value such as 1012 can be used to avoid numerical problems.

610
A. Case 1
For this example, the transmitted signal is a Hadamard
waveform scrambled by pseudo-noise, which possesses good
orthogonality and cross-correlation properties [19]. The length
of the transmit waveform is set at L = 64 and the number of
data collection positions for this case, N , is restricted to one.
The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is 40 dB.
The SAR image formed by using a DAS estimator is shown
in Figure 1(b) which has very low resolution for this limited
data case. Similarly, the CAPON and APES results, shown in
Figures 1(c) and 1(d), respectively, have difculty resolving
the targets and are plagued with noise. The performance of
IAA is shown in Figure 1(e). IAA has been iterated 10
times. As evidenced, IAA achieves much higher resolution
and accuracy than the aforementioned techniques. Since some
smearing has occurred across neighboring targets within the
same range bin, we apply BIC to the IAA result to obtain
a sparse image (with the goal of isolating the scatterers of
interest). The result of using IAA with BIC, shown in Figure
1(f), has fewer false alarms and reduced smearing.
B. Case 2
Secondly, we consider two different sets of test conditions
designed to highlight the performance of IAA in scenarios
with high noise levels and limited amounts of data.
First, consider the DAS, CAPON, and APES results shown
in Figures 2(b)-2(d), respectively. In addition, the result using
CAPES, an approach that combines the performance of APES
and CAPON, is shown in Figure 2(e), where the generalized
likelihood ratio test (GLRT) has rst been applied to identify
targets of interest [14]. For these results, optimized waveforms
have been generated using a cyclic algorithm [20], the length
of the transmit signal has been set at L = 128 and N = 10.
The SNR is again xed at 40 dB. As shown, the CAPES
approach, which outperforms the others, is able to resolve most
of the targets with only a few detected false alarms.
Next, to produce the IAA result, we limit the amount of data
available and increase the noise levels. Instead of transmitting
optimal waveforms, the Hadamard signal with pseudo-noise
will be used. The transmit signal length is now restricted to
L = 32 and N is decreased to two. Moreover, the SNR is
reduced to 15 dB. As before, the DAS image (under these same
test conditions) is used to initialize the algorithm. The result
of using IAA with BIC is shown in Figure 2(f). Even under
such restricted levels of data and increased noise, IAA is able
to resolve each of the targets accurately. Also, the application
of BIC serves to produce sparsity and reduce the number of
false alarms similar to the previous example.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
Herein we have shown how IAA can be extended to MIMO
SAR imaging. In two examples, IAA was shown to signi-
cantly outperform other well-known adaptive array processing
techniques. Even in the presence of higher noise levels and
with far less data, IAA was shown to perform better than
other approaches under more favorable testing conditions. In
addition, the application of BIC served to further improve the
IAA result by producing sparsity in the target estimates.
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 1 0

2 2 5
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Range
6

8 0.4 20
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10 0.2 10
30
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20 0 20 30 20 10 0 10 20 30
Angle (deg) Angle (deg)

(a) (b)
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Range
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20 20
8 8
25 25
10 10
30 30

12 12
35 35
30 20 10 0 10 20 30 30 20 10 0 10 20 30
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(c) (d)
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20 20
8 8
25 25
10 10
30 30

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35 35
30 20 10 0 10 20 30 30 20 10 0 10 20 30
Angle (deg) Angle (deg)

(e) (f)
Fig. 1. Case 1 results: (a) Ground truth, (b) DAS, (c) CAPON, (d) APES, (e) IAA and (f) IAA with BIC. The levels are in dB for (b)-(f).

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4 4 10

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Range
6

8 0.4 20
8
25
10 0.2 10
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10 10
30 30

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30 20 10 0 10 20 30 30 20 10 0 10 20 30
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(e) (f)
Fig. 2. Case 2 results: (a) Ground truth, (b) DAS, (c) CAPON, (d) APES, (e) CAPES and (f) IAA with BIC. The levels are in dB for (b)-(f).

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