MIMO Radar Waveform Design in Spectrum-Crowded Environments With Uncertain Steering Vectors

The growing density of communication and radar devices renders multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar systems susceptible to severe detection performance degradation caused by even slight steering vector mismatches. To ensure robust detection under such mismatches, this paper presents a robust waveform design approach based on a steering vector uncertainty-constrained Max-Min signal-to-interference-plus noise ratio (SINR) formulation. Compared to conventional Max SINR designs, the proposed method optimizes waveforms that maintain high SINR even in the presence of steering vector errors. The problem incorporates constraints for spectral compatibility and peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). To solve this non convex problem, we develop an efficient iterative algorithm that employs successive convex approximation (SCA) to transform the original problem into a sequence of convex subproblems, which are then solved in parallel via the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Numerical simulations show a reduction in convergence time of up to 30% compared to existing techniques.