Minimum-length waveform design for MIMO radar via joint transmit-receive optimization

In modern MIMO radar systems, the length of the transmit waveform directly affects both energy consumption and vulnerability to interception. Short-duration waveforms are highly desirable for power-constrained platforms, as they reduce per-pulse energy consumption and extend battery life; moreover, shorter waveforms inherently offer improved low-probability-of-intercept (LPI) performance by reducing the radar’s on-air exposure time. In this paper, we consider the joint design of transmit waveform with minimum- length and receive filters for a collocated multiple- input multiple- output (MIMO) radar system under the existence of signal- dependent interference sources. The problem of waveform design is formulated as minimization of the actual length of transmit waveform under the signal-to-interference-plus noise ratio (SINR) and constant modulus constraints. To the best of our knowledge, this problem is barely investigated in the current literature. The length of transmit waveform is a formal variable and cannot be optimized directly. In the light of this, we introduced a code-choosing vector with several constraints to make it solvable. The formulated problem possesses complicated fractional constraint, and we introduce several auxiliary variables to simplify it. Then we utilize the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) framework to solve it iteratively. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of our model and proposed algorithm to design minimum- length waveform under the SINR and constant modulus requirement.