Joint DOD and DOA Estimation in Bistatic MIMO Radar With Distributed Nested Arrays

In this paper, we investigate the problem of joint direction of departure (DOD) and the direction of arrival (DOA) estimation in bistatic MIMO radar. A new bistatic MIMO radar with the distributed nested array is proposed. Based on the new array, the DOD and DOA estimation algorithm called automatically paired DR-ESPRIT based on the angle disambiguation algorithm by using the range information of targets is proposed. By designing distributed nested array and using Khatri-Rao product processing, the long baseline and short baseline in the transceiver arrays are virtually extended simultaneously. The non-ambiguous and high-accuracy sine estimations of the DOD and DOA can be accomplished using DR-ESPRIT algorithm and the range information of targets and the geometry of bistatic MIMO radar. The virtual extension of array aperture and high angle estimation accuracy can be achieved for the MIMO radar with automatic pairing and without increasing the number of antennas compared with traditional uniform linear MIMO array. And, the proposed corresponding algorithm gives significant improvement in the DOD and DOA estimation performance. The simulation results validate the theoretical algorithm.