Joint Beamforming Design for Low Probability of Intercept in Transmit Subaperturing MIMO Radar

In this paper, the joint design of transmit and receive beamformers for transmit subaperturing multiple-input-multiple-output (TS-MIMO) radar is investigated, aiming to enhance its low probability of intercept (LPI) capability. The main objective is to simultaneously minimize the transmission power, suppress the transmit sidelobe levels, and minimize the probability of intercept, thus bolstering the LPI performance of the radar system while maintaining the desired target detection performance. An alternative optimization method is proposed to jointly optimize the transmit and receive beamformers, yielding an unified LPI optimization framework. Particularly, the proposed iterative algorithm based on the Lagrange duality theory for transmit beamforming is more efficient than the conventional convex optimization method. Numerical experiments highlight the effectiveness of the proposed approach in sidelobe suppression and computational efficiency.