Cognitive Sub-Nyquist Hardware Prototype of a Collocated MIMO Radar

We present the design and hardware implementation of a radar prototype that demonstrates the principle of a sub-Nyquist collocated multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar. The setup allows sampling in both spatial and spectral domains at rates much lower than dictated by the Nyquist sampling theorem. Our prototype realizes an X-band MIMO radar that can be configured to have a maximum of 8 transmit and 10 receive antenna elements. We use frequency division multiplexing (FDM) to achieve the orthogonality of MIMO waveforms and apply the Xampling framework for signal recovery. The prototype also implements a cognitive transmission scheme where each transmit waveform is restricted to those pre-determined subbands of the full signal bandwidth that the receiver samples and processes. Real-time experiments show reasonable recovery performance while operating as a 4x5 thinned random array wherein the combined spatial and spectral sampling factor reduction is 87.5% of that of a filled 8x10 array.Comment: 5 pages, Compressed Sensing Theory and its Applications to Radar, Sonar and Remote Sensing (CoSeRa) 201

Evaluation of the Impact of Packet Drops due to AQM over Capacity Limited Paths

Postprin

Inferring Balancing Selection From Genome-Scale Data

The identification of genomic regions and genes that have evolved under natural selection is a fundamental objective in the field of evolutionary genetics. While various approaches have been established for the detection of targets of positive selection, methods for identifying targets of balancing selection, a form of natural selection that preserves genetic and phenotypic diversity within populations, have yet to be fully developed. Despite this, balancing selection is increasingly acknowledged as a significant driver of diversity within populations, and the identification of its signatures in genomes is essential for understanding its role in evolution. In recent years, a plethora of sophisticated methods has been developed for the detection of patterns of linked variation produced by balancing selection, such as high levels of polymorphism, altered allele-frequency distributions, and polymorphism sharing across divergent populations. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of classical and contemporary methods, offer guidance on the choice of appropriate methods, and discuss the importance of avoiding artifacts and of considering alternative evolutionary processes. The increasing availability of genome-scale datasets holds the potential to assist in the identification of new targets and the quantification of the prevalence of balancing selection, thus enhancing our understanding of its role in natural populations

A Vector Channel Based Approach to MIMO Radar Waveform Design for Extended Targets

Radar systems have been used for many years for estimating, detecting, classifying, and imaging objects of interest (targets). Stealthier targets and more cluttered environments have created a need for more sophisticated radar systems to gain more precise information about the radar environment. Because modern radar systems are largely defined in software, adaptive radar systems have emerged that tailor system parameters such as the transmitted waveform and receiver filter to the target and environment in order to address this need. The basic structure of a radar system exhibits many similarities to the structure of a communication system. Recognizing the parallel composition of radar systems and information transmission systems, initial works have begun to explore the application of information theory to radar system design, but a great deal of work still remains to make a full and clear connection between the problems addressed by radar systems and communication systems. Forming a comprehensive definition of this connection between radar systems and information transmission systems and associated problem descriptions could facilitate the cross-discipline transfer of ideas and accelerate the development and improvement of new system design solutions in both fields. In particular, adaptive radar system design is a relatively new field which stands to benefit from the maturity of information theory developed for information transmission if a parallel can be drawn to clearly relate similar radar and communication problems. No known previous work has yet drawn a clear parallel between the general multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar system model considering both the detection and estimation of multiple extended targets and a similar multiuser vector channel information transmission system model. The goal of this dissertation is to develop a novel vector channel framework to describe a MIMO radar system and to study information theoretic adaptive radar waveform design for detection and estimation of multiple radar targets within this framework. Specifically, this dissertation first provides a new compact vector channel model for representing a MIMO radar system which illustrates the parallel composition of radar systems and information transmission systems. Second, using the proposed framework this dissertation contributes a compressed sensing based information theoretic approach to waveform design for the detection of multiple extended targets in noiseless and noisy scenarios. Third, this dissertation defines the multiple extended target estimation problem within the framework and proposes a greedy signal to interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) maximizing procedure based on a similar approach developed for a collaborative multibase wireless communication system to optimally design wave forms in this scenario

Auto-regressive model based polarimetric adaptive detection scheme part I: Theoretical derivation and performance analysis

This paper deals with the problem of target detection in coherent radar systems exploiting polarimetric diversity. We resort to a parametric approach and we model the disturbance affecting the data as a multi-channel autoregressive (AR) process. Following this model, a new polarimetric adaptive detector is derived, which aims at improving the target detection capability while relaxing the requirements on the training data size and the computational burden with respect to existing solutions. A complete theoretical characterization of the asymptotic performance of the derived detector is provided, using two different target fluctuation models. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is shown against simulated data, in comparison with alternative existing solutions

MIMO Radar Waveform Design and Sparse Reconstruction for Extended Target Detection in Clutter

This dissertation explores the detection and false alarm rate performance of a novel transmit-waveform and receiver filter design algorithm as part of a larger Compressed Sensing (CS) based Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) bistatic radar system amidst clutter. Transmit-waveforms and receiver filters were jointly designed using an algorithm that minimizes the mutual coherence of the combined transmit-waveform, target frequency response, and receiver filter matrix product as a design criterion. This work considered the Probability of Detection (P D) and Probability of False Alarm (P FA) curves relative to a detection threshold, τ th, Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC), reconstruction error and mutual coherence measures for performance characterization of the design algorithm to detect both known and fluctuating targets and amidst realistic clutter and noise. Furthermore, this work paired the joint waveform-receiver filter design algorithm with multiple sparse reconstruction algorithms, including: Regularized Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (ROMP), Compressive Sampling Matching Pursuit (CoSaMP) and Complex Approximate Message Passing (CAMP) algorithms. It was found that the transmit-waveform and receiver filter design algorithm significantly outperforms statically designed, benchmark waveforms for the detection of both known and fluctuating extended targets across all tested sparse reconstruction algorithms. In particular, CoSaMP was specified to minimize the maximum allowable P FA of the CS radar system as compared to the baseline ROMP sparse reconstruction algorithm of previous work. However, while the designed waveforms do provide performance gains and CoSaMP affords a reduced peak false alarm rate as compared to the previous work, fluctuating target impulse responses and clutter severely hampered CS radar performance when either of these sparse reconstruction techniques were implemented. To improve detection rate and, by extension, ROC performance of the CS radar system under non-ideal conditions, this work implemented the CAMP sparse reconstruction algorithm in the CS radar system. It was found that detection rates vastly improve with the implementation of CAMP, especially in the case of fluctuating target impulse responses amidst clutter or at low receive signal to noise ratios (β n). Furthermore, where previous work considered a τ th=0, the implementation of a variable τ th in this work offered novel trade off between P D and P FA in radar design to the CS radar system. In the simulated radar scene it was found that τ th could be moderately increased retaining the same or similar P D while drastically improving P FA. This suggests that the selection and specification of the sparse reconstruction algorithm and corresponding τ th for this radar system is not trivial. Rather, a tradeoff was noted between P D and P FA based on the choice and parameters of the sparse reconstruction technique and detection threshold, highlighting an engineering trade-space in CS radar system design. Thus, in CS radar system design, the radar designer must carefully choose and specify the sparse reconstruction technique and appropriate detection threshold in addition to transmit-waveforms, receiver filters and building the dictionary of target impulse responses for detection in the radar scene

Target Localization in MIMO OFDM Radars Adopting Adaptive Power Allocation among Selected Sub-Carriers

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar has been introduced to enhance the performance of classical radar systems. Nevertheless, radar cross sections (RCS) fluctuations remains a known problem in radars. Target localization using narrowband signal produces reduced accuracy due to RCS fluctuations. One of the solution to this problem is utilization of frequency diversity of wideband signal. This paper presents target localization in MIMO radars using an adaptive orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform for effective frequency diversity utilization. Each transmitting antenna transmits an OFDM signal in different time slots and received by the each receiving antenna in the receiver array. A joint direction-of-departure (DOD) and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation scheme is applied to each of the OFDM sub-carrier using two-way multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm. The estimation results at each sub-carrier are combined based on majority decision using angle histogram (non-parametric approach) to formulate the final wideband angle estimation. In addition, an adaptive power allocation among the sub-carriers is implemented, where the system evaluates the signal quality at each sub-carrier and consequently formulates a feedback to the MIMO transmitting side. The following transmission will comprise of OFDM waveform that focuses the transmit power at selected sub-carriers only. The sub-carrier selection is based on singular values obtained from singular value decomposition operation at each of the sub-carrier. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated through numerical simulations as well as validation by experiments in a radio anechoic chamber. It was demonstrated that the usage of larger number of sub-carriers improves the angle estimation accuracy