Generalized spatial smoothing in bistatic EMVS-MIMO radar

Abstract This paper revisits the problem of multiple parameters estimation for coherent targets in bistatic EMVS-MIMO radar. By extending the spatial smoothing mechanism to the EMVS-MIMO radar, three generalized spatial smoothing estimators, named the TS approach, the RS approach and the TRS approach, have been proposed. The killer idea of the proposed methodologies is to recover the rank of the covariance matrix via averaging the array measurement in spatial domain, and then estimate the parameters from the cooperation of the normalized vector cross-product technique and the LS method. Unlike the state-of-the-art polarization smoothing methods, the proposed methods would not sacrifice the polarization information, so that TS, RS and TRS are capable of providing polarization information of the coherent targets. The proposed estimators do not require any constrain on the geometries of the Tx/Rx EMVS arrays. They are computationally friendly yet retain robustness to the sensor position error. The proposed estimators are analyzed in detail, and numerical simulations are provided to verify their theoretical advantages.