A radar system, apparatus, architecture, and method are provided for generating a mono-static virtual array aperture by using a radar control processing unit to construct a mono-static MIMO virtual array aperture from radar signals transmitted orthogonally from transmit antennas and received at each receive antennas, and to construct a mono-static MIMO forward difference virtual array aperture by performing forward difference co-array processing on the mono-static MIMO virtual array aperture to fill in holes in the mono-static MIMO virtual array aperture, thereby mitigating or suppressing spurious sidelobes caused by gaps or holes in the mono-static MIMO virtual array aperture.