Task-specific Sparse MIMO Array Design for TWRI using Multi-objective CMA-ES

Array topology design has long been a research focus in radar imaging community, especially for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) through-the-wall radar imaging (TWRI), in which a small number of transmit and receive antenna elements are deployed in a certain fashion in aim of achieving the best possible focusing performance improvement. All prior works design the array topology in freespace, then apply the designed topology to through wall scenarios. In this paper, a wall parameters dependent array topology design strategy for TWRI is proposed. By incorporation of the transmission coefficients of the wall into the imaging model, two optimization criteria of minimum averaged grating lobes and minimum entropy of the image synthesizing operator are used to cast the problem as a two-objective optimization problem, which is then solved using the multi-objective covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES) algorithm. It is shown that, a less cluttered image can be achieved using this new approach for design of TWRI array topology.