This document discusses the effect of multipath on covariance-based beamforming in MIMO radar.
It begins with an introduction to MIMO radar and covariance-based beamforming methods. It then presents a signal model that incorporates multipath effects, showing how the beam pattern expression is modified.
Simulations are shown analyzing how multipath can change the beam pattern peak direction, increase sidelobe levels, and produce false peaks, depending on the random amplitudes and phases of the multipath signals. Increasing the number of multipath paths or their phase variance generally leads to greater errors in the desired beam pattern.