Patent ID: 11888554
Assignee: NXP USA, INC.
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 0:
1. A distributed aperture radar system comprising a plurality of small aperture radar devices that are physically distributed from one another and connected to a radar control processing unit;
wherein each of the plurality of small aperture radar devices comprises:
a first plurality of transmit antennas which are controlled by the radar control processing unit to transmit orthogonal MIMO radar signals,
a first plurality of receive antennas which are controlled by the radar control processing unit to receive MIMO radar signal returns, and
a receive processing module which is configured to generate digital output signals from the MIMO radar signal returns; and

wherein the radar control processing unit is configured:
to process the digital output signals generated by the plurality of small aperture radar devices to construct a sparse MIMO virtual array aperture, and
to construct beamforming outputs of an extended difference co-array virtual array aperture that is larger than the MIMO virtual array aperture by using an FFT hardware accelerator to perform spectral-domain auto-correlation based processing of the sparse MIMO virtual array aperture to fill in holes in the sparse MIMO virtual array aperture and to suppress spurious sidelobes caused by holes in the sparse MIMO virtual array aperture.