Proposed Project Title: Massive MIMO Radar
Principal Supervisor: Dr. Michalis Matthaiou

Project Description:

The development of radar applications has been seamless over the past decades. While the early radar development was mostly driven by military, including surveillance, navigation and weapon guidance, radar now spans a plethora of emerging applications, namely meteorological detection of precipitation, measuring ocean surface waves, air traffic control, police detection of speeding traffic, sports radar speed guns, and preventing car or ship collisions. These demanding applications have motivated the combination of radar with the well-known Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology. This technological combination can potentially eliminate many of the radar shortcomings, in particular, fading mitigation, resolution enhancement, interference and jamming suppression. This is achieved by transmitting multiple independent waveforms through the transmit antennas, as compared to conventional transmit beamforming radar systems that use highly correlated waveforms. In this project, we seek to extend the concept of MIMO radar to another dimension and explore the potential of massive MIMO radar, which will deploy hundreds of low-power antennas on the transmit side. While massive MIMO is a novel technological shift, originally designed for 5G communication systems, it is strongly believed that it can boost the performance of radar-oriented applications through extremely sharp beamforming. By doing so, we can enjoy increased diversity for target information, energy efficiency, excellent interference rejection capability and improved parameter identifiability.

Objectives:

This PhD thesis will be divided into a theoretical investigation (which will be carried out at ECIT laboratory (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)) and an experimental implementation (which will be done at ESYCOM laboratory (Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France)). From a theoretical point of view, this project will seek to compare the performance of different array topologies and devise novel signal processing schemes, suitable for massive MIMO radar, to improve target information acquaintance and their robustness against jammers, as well as, design transmit beampattern schemes. Given that the number of targets will be much smaller than the total number of antennas, the target information will be spanning a low-rank subspace, which motivates the use of blind channel estimation schemes for massive MIMO radar. The developed processing techniques will be validated with measurement campaigns. An existing platform dedicated to MIMO radar will be upgraded and used to carry out real-time experiments.

Academic Requirements:

Successful candidates should hold a Master of Science degree (or equivalent) on Electrical Engineering or Mathematics. A strong knowledge in signal processing and digital communications, as well as skills for experimentation are expected.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Since this PhD project is part of the UK-France joint PhD programme of DSTL (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) and DGA (Direction Générale de l’Armement), only citizens of UK or French nationality are eligible to apply. A very competitive salary is offered for the duration of the PhD program.

Applicants should apply by 5 May 2015 through the Queen’s online application portal at:
https://dap.qub.ac.uk/portal/

Further information available at:
http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/eeecs/StudyattheSchool/PhDProgrammes/

Contact detail

Supervisor Name: Dr. Michalis Matthaiou
Tel: +44 (0)28 9097 1789
Email: m.matthaiou<στο>qub.ac.uk

QUB Address:

ECIT Institute, Queen's Road
Queen's University Belfast
Northern Ireland Science Park
Belfast, BT3 9DT
Northern Ireland, U.K.

Deadline for submission of applications is: 5^th May 2015

For further information on Research Area click on link below:
https://sites.google.com/site/micmatthaiou/home