Music-based multichannel forward scatter radar: waveform effect and experimental validation

This paper elaborates on the application of MUSIC algorithm for amplitude-only array signal processing in multichannel forward scatter radar (MC-FSR) with the aim to provide enhanced resolution even in the presence of a limited number of receiving channels. The study focuses on the impact of the adopted waveform on target detection and direction-ofarrival (DOA) estimation performance of the resulting system, with special attention to the popular orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing (OFDM) waveforms. The effects of spatial smoothing on mitigating coherence issues and its trade-offs in terms of computational complexity and degrees of freedom (DoF) reduction are also examined. Additionally, this paper features experimental validation of the MUSIC-Based MC-FSR. The experiments using real-world data confirms that the MUSIC algorithm effectively enhances target detection and DOA estimation in FSR. Moreover, its combination with OFDM signals is shown to provide remarkable separation capability of target returns, demonstrating its applicability in integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) scenarios.