  In this paper, we address the problem of transmit beamspace design for
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar with colocated antennas in
application to direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. A new method for
designing the transmit beamspace matrix that enables the use of search-free DOA
estimation techniques at the receiver is introduced. The essence of the
proposed method is to design the transmit beamspace matrix based on minimizing
the difference between a desired transmit beampattern and the actual one under
the constraint of uniform power distribution across the transmit array
elements. The desired transmit beampattern can be of arbitrary shape and is
allowed to consist of one or more spatial sectors. The number of transmit
waveforms is even but otherwise arbitrary. To allow for simple search-free DOA
estimation algorithms at the receive array, the rotational invariance property
is established at the transmit array by imposing a specific structure on the
beamspace matrix. Semi-definite relaxation is used to transform the proposed
formulation into a convex problem that can be solved efficiently. We also
propose a spatial-division based design (SDD) by dividing the spatial domain
into several subsectors and assigning a subset of the transmit beams to each
subsector. The transmit beams associated with each subsector are designed
separately. Simulation results demonstrate the improvement in the DOA
estimation performance offered by using the proposed joint and SDD transmit
beamspace design methods as compared to the traditional MIMO radar technique.
