Single-stage transmit beamforming design for MIMO radar

MIMO radar beamforming algorithms usually consist of a signal covariance matrix synthesis stage, followed by signal synthesis to fit the obtained covariance matrix. In this paper, we propose a radar beamforming algorithm (called BeamShape) that performs a single-stage radar transmit signal design; i.e. no prior covariance matrix synthesis is required. Beam-Shape’s theoretical as well as computational characteristics, include: (i) the possibility of considering signal structures such as low-rank, discrete-phase or low-PAR, and (ii) the significantly reduced computational burden for beampattern matching scenarios with large grid size. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is illustrated through numerical examples.