OFDM waveform design based on mutual information for cognitive radar applications

摘要

We propose a novel optimization method based on wideband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals to detect random extended targets with known covariance matrix in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise. Mutual information is used as our criterion for waveform design under transmitted power constraint. We utilize the advantage of OFDM signal to intelligently design the complex weights of the transmitted waveform. For making complete use of the transmission power, a novel iterative algorithm is introduced based on maximizing mutual information criterion between the target impulse response and the received echoes. We have derived the optimal Neyman-Pearson detector for the corresponding hypothesis testing problem and provided different numerical experiments to demonstrate the achieved performance improvement when the proposed method is applied.