SKEWED MIMO ANTENNA ARRAY FOR USE IN AUTOMOTIVE IMAGING RADAR

摘要

A novel and useful system and method of constmcting a skewed or staggered multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna array system for automotive radar having high azimuth and elevation angular resolution and accuracy that provides increased effective aperture while using a low number of TX and RX elements. Improved element separation is achieved by distancing (i.e. staggering or skewing) RX rows and TX columns by using row and column circular shifts along their major axis. Due to the physical size of antenna elements, it is not physically possible to place the rows and columns in the full array symmetric RX-TX pattern without creating a gap in the center of the virtual array. This array reduces the overall size of the antenna achieving a compact size and low side lobe level (SLL). In addition, to minimize the resulting RX saturation of elements physically close to TX elements, the system blanks (i.e. zeros) the data for those elements. The rows of the transmit columns may also be staggered, either symmetrically or asymmetrically depending on the skewing factor.