This paper compares the sensing performance of a narrowband near-field system across several practical antenna array geometries and SIMO/MISO and MIMO configurations. For identical transmit and receive apertures, MIMO processing is equivalent to squaring the near-field array factor, resulting in improved beamdepth and sidelobe level. Analytical derivations, supported by simulations, show that the MIMO processing improves the maximum near-field sensing range and resolution by approximately a factor of 1.4 compared to a single-aperture system. Using a quadratic approximation of the mainlobe of the array factor, an analytical improvement factor of 2 is derived, validating the numerical results. Finally, MIMO is shown to improve the poor sidelobe performance observed in the near-field by a factor of two, due to squaring of the array factor.
@article{arxiv.2505.10053,
title = {Analysis of the Range Ambiguity Function of Narrowband Near-field MIMO Sensing},
author = {Marcin Wachowiak and André Bourdoux and Sofie Pollin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.10053},
year = {2026}
}