Pulsed-chaos MIMO radar based on a single flat-spectrum and Delta-like autocorrelation optical chaos source

We propose and demonstrate a pulsed-chaos multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) radar system in this paper. In the proposed MIMO radar system, multi-channel pulsed chaotic signals are extracted from an optical seed chaos source with Delta-like autocorrelation and flat spectrum. The seed chaos source is generated by passing the chaotic output of an external-cavity semiconductor laser through a dispersive self-feedback phase-modulation loop and used for MIMO radar signal generation. The cross-correlation characteristics of MIMO radar signals, the maximum channel number of separable mixed echoes, as well as the performances of multi-target ranging and anti-interference in the proposed pulsed-chaos MIMO radar system are systematically investigated. The results indicate that multi-channel pulsed-chaos signals with Delta-like autocorrelation can be simultaneously generated from the seed chaos source, and excellent quasi-orthogonality of transmission radar signals can be guaranteed. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the proposed pulsed-chaos MIMO radar supports multi-target ranging with a centimeter-level resolution and can maintain satisfactory performance under low SNR scenarios with various interferences.