An estimation-theoretic approach to joint antenna placement and power allocation in colocated MIMO radar

MIMO radar systems offer significant performance improvements but come with challenges in terms of hardware costs and processing complexity. In this work, we propose a joint antenna placement and power allocation (JAPPA) scheme based on an estimation-theoretic approach to cope with such challenges. We formulate an optimization problem to minimize the number of antennas while bounding a scalar metric of the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) matrix for a two-target scenario. The problem is cast as a convex optimization problem, which can be efficiently solved. Computer simulations validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in reducing the number of antennas as well as the total power while meeting performance requirements with respect to a benchmark design.