Joint sparsity-driven three-dimensional imaging method for multiple-input multiple-output radar with sparse antenna array

Three-dimensional (3D) imaging of a moving target can be achieved via a wideband multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar with planar array in a single snapshot. The sparse recovery (SR) method has been introduced to deal with the MIMO imaging problem with sparse array recently. For sparse linear array, SR method can successfully achieve the high cross-range resolution. For sparse planar array, however, it is not effective to use a SR algorithm directly in 2D cross-range direction, because the final 2D imagery will be blurred by the SR-induced range cell migration (RCM) in the former cross-range direction. To remove the RCM, a joint sparsity-driven method is proposed in this study by exploiting the joint sparsity of echo signal. An improved imagery can be obtained with fewer antennas and higher calculation efficiency. Comparative experiments demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method.