Joint Placement of Transmitters and Receivers for Distributed MIMO Radars

Geometry configuration is crucial to the system performance in distributed multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) radars. Sensor placement in distributed MIMO radars is different from the conventional sensor placement problem as transmitters and receivers need to cooperate with each other to perform sensing. In this paper, we establish a combinatorial optimization model for the joint placement of transmitters and receivers. The proposed algorithm first transforms the original model into an equivalent model with convex constraints via convex relaxation. Then, the nonconvex objective function is further replaced with a new convex surrogate. The surrogate is shown to converge to a good approximation of the original optimal solution. The performance of the proposed algorithm is validated using numerical simulations.