Passive MIMO radar detection in the presence of clutter or multi‐path without reference channel

Target detection problem in a multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) radar which includes non‐cooperative illuminators of opportunity (IOs) and spatially distributed receivers is discussed. The receivers utilize only one processing channel and discard the difficulties in providing an ideal version of the transmitted waveforms. The signal model, in addition to the receiver noise and the possible echo from the target of interest, considers the direct‐path and clutter/multi‐path interferences (DPI and MPI). A Rao test and an approximated GLR test detectors are proposed to solve the problem and an innovative recursive algorithm is proposed to simultaneously estimate the nuisance parameters in the test. Then, by regarding some matrix properties in the proposed Rao detector expression, a low complexity version of the Rao detector is proposed. Besides, two detectors based on Rao and GLR principles in the case of active MIMO radar are introduced as the performance upper‐bounds for the proposed detectors. The convergence and suitable performance of the proposed detectors are verified by numerical simulations.