Adaptive JSPA in distributed colocated MIMO radar network for multiple targets tracking

In this study, the authors present a distributed resource-awareness colocated multiple-input–multiple-output radar network for multiple targets tracking. Specifically, taking posterior Cramér–Rao lower bound as the performance metric, they propose a joint scheduling and power allocation (JSPA) scheme as a sparse optimisation problem. The sparsity of the solution enables the JSPA scheme to jointly optimise the schedule and corresponding transmit power of radars by the non-zero entries with associated amplitudes. The JSPA scheme has the robustness of feasibility even if there is not enough resource to achieve the prescribed performance requirements of targets. In this case, the JSPA scheme will automatically relax the performance bounds for individual targets at the lowest price and decide the number of targets to be tracked according to the priorities. They also propose a global optimal fusion rule that builds the connection between resource allocation and distributed tracking. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The JSPA scheme can dynamically adjust the resource utilisation of the tracking of individual targets according to the accuracy demands. The performance of important targets is favoured to be satisfied, whereas a target with low priority may be dropped by the JSPA scheme if necessary.