CRB Analysis for Mixed-ADC PMCW MIMO Radar

We consider a mixed-ADC architecture, in which most receive antenna outputs are sampled by one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADC's), and one or several outputs by high-resolution ADC's, for phase-modulated continuous-wave (PMCW) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar systems. We derive the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) for the mixed-ADC architecture PMCW MIMO radar to characterize the best achievable performance of an unbiased target parameter estimator. The study of CRB demonstrates that the mixed-ADC architecture with a relatively small number of high-precision ADC's and a large number of one-bit ADC's allows us to drastically reduce the hardware cost and power consumption while still maintain a high dynamic range needed for automotive radar systems.