A Comparison of the Tracking Performance of Cognitive Co-Located MIMO and Phased-Array Radars

In this paper, we analyze and compare the tracking performance of cognitive co-located MIMO and phased-array radars. The cognitive MIMO radar optimizes its transmitted signal based on information from previous observations, and meanwhile obtains an estimate of the target parameters. The optimization criterion for the design of the transmitted signal is minimizing the Bayesian Cramer-Rao Bound (BCRB). The monopulse tracking method is assumed to be used in the phased-array radar. The simulation results show that the phased-array radar outperforms the cognitive MIMO radar in the tracking performance, despite the waveform diversity presented in MIMO radars. The phased-array radar has a much lower complexity and achieves a better estimate of the target angle in terms of the mean-square error and bias of the estimation.