Conditional and constrained joint optimization of RADAR waveforms

In this paper we describe a methodology of jointly designing waveforms for a semi-cooperative, distributed radar system. Some radars have waveforms which are fixed and cannot adapt. The remainder of the group must optimize their emanations conditioned on the existence of the non-cooperative radars. We term this 'conditional joint optimization.' A special case is termed constrained joint optimization examines the problem when the RADAR configuration is completely cooperative. Only classic constraints such as phase-only, finite energy, etc. are considered. The overall metric that is used in the optimization is signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR). We will show the results of a number of empirical experiments based on canonical spectra and knowledge aided sensor signal processing for expert reasoning (KASSPER) simulated data that show that a joint conditional design will outperform a non-cooperative, individually optimized RADAR network.