No Arabic abstract
We present an ultra-short range IEEE 802.11ad-based automotive joint radar-communications (JRC) framework, wherein we improve the radars Doppler resilience by incorporating Prouhet-Thue-Morse sequences in the preamble. The proposed processing reveals detailed micro-features of common automotive objects verified through extended scattering center models of animated pedestrian, bicycle, and car targets. Numerical experiments demonstrate $2.5$% reduction in the probability-of-false-alarm at low signal-to-noise-ratios and improvement in the peak-to-sidelobe level dynamic range up to Doppler velocities of $pm144$ km/hr over conventional 802.11ad JRC.
Dual function radar communications (DFRC) systems are attractive technologies for autonomous vehicles, which utilize electromagnetic waves to constantly sense the environment while simultaneously communicating with neighbouring devices. An emerging approach to implement DFRC systems is to embed information in radar waveforms via index modulation (IM). Implementation of DFRC schemes in vehicular systems gives rise to strict constraints in terms of cost, power efficiency, and hardware complexity. In this paper, we extend IM-based DFRC systems to utilize sparse arrays and frequency modulated continuous waveforms (FMCWs), which are popular in automotive radar for their simplicity and low hardware complexity. The proposed FMCW-based radar-communications system (FRaC) operates at reduced cost and complexity by transmitting with a reduced number of radio frequency modules, combined with narrowband FMCW signalling. This is achieved via array sparsification in transmission, formulating a virtual multiple-input multiple-output array by combining the signals in one coherent processing interval, in which the narrowband waveforms are transmitted in a randomized manner. Performance analysis and numerical results show that the proposed radar scheme achieves similar resolution performance compared with a wideband radar system operating with a large receive aperture, while requiring less hardware overhead. For the communications subsystem, FRaC achieves higher rates and improved error rates compared to dual-function signalling based on conventional phase modulation.
We consider the problem of range-Doppler imaging using one-bit automotive LFMCW1 or PMCW radar that utilizes one-bit ADC sampling with time-varying thresholds at the receiver. The one-bit sampling technique can significantly reduce the cost as well as the power consumption of automotive radar systems. We formulate the one-bit LFMCW/PMCW radar rangeDoppler imaging problem as one-bit sparse parameter estimation. The recently proposed hyperparameter-free (and hence user friendly) weighted SPICE algorithms, including SPICE, LIKES, SLIM and IAA, achieve excellent parameter estimation performance for data sampled with high precision. However, these algorithms cannot be used directly for one-bit data. In this paper we first present a regularized minimization algorithm, referred to as 1bSLIM, for accurate range-Doppler imaging using onebit radar systems. Then, we describe how to extend the SPICE, LIKES and IAA algorithms to the one-bit data case, and refer to these extensions as 1bSPICE, 1bLIKES and 1bIAA. These onebit hyperparameter-free algorithms are unified within the one-bit weighted SPICE framework. Moreover, efficient implementations of the aforementioned algorithms are investigated that rely heavily on the use of FFTs. Finally, both simulated and experimental examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms for range-Doppler imaging using one-bit automotive radar systems.
Due to spectrum scarcity, the coexistence of radar and wireless communication has gained substantial research interest recently. Among many scenarios, the heterogeneouslydistributed joint radar-communication system is promising due to its flexibility and compatibility of existing architectures. In this paper, we focus on a heterogeneous radar and communication network (HRCN), which consists of various generic radars for multiple target tracking (MTT) and wireless communications for multiple users. We aim to improve the MTT performance and maintain good throughput levels for communication users by a well-designed resource allocation. The problem is formulated as a Bayesian Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) based minimization subjecting to resource budgets and throughput constraints. The formulated nonconvex problem is solved based on an alternating descent-ascent approach. Numerical results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed allocation scheme for this heterogeneous network.
Synergistic design of communications and radar systems with common spectral and hardware resources is heralding a new era of efficiently utilizing a limited radio-frequency spectrum. Such a joint radar-communications (JRC) model has advantages of low-cost, compact size, less power consumption, spectrum sharing, improved performance, and safety due to enhanced information sharing. Today, millimeter-wave (mm-wave) communications have emerged as the preferred technology for short distance wireless links because they provide transmission bandwidth that is several gigahertz wide. This band is also promising for short-range radar applications, which benefit from the high-range resolution arising from large transmit signal bandwidths. Signal processing techniques are critical in implementation of mmWave JRC systems. Major challenges are joint waveform design and performance criteria that would optimally trade-off between communications and radar functionalities. Novel multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) signal processing techniques are required because mmWave JRC systems employ large antenna arrays. There are opportunities to exploit recent advances in cognition, compressed sensing, and machine learning to reduce required resources and dynamically allocate them with low overheads. This article provides a signal processing perspective of mmWave JRC systems with an emphasis on waveform design.
Inter-carrier interference (ICI) poses a significant challenge for OFDM joint radar-communications (JRC) systems in high-mobility scenarios. In this paper, we propose a novel ICI-aware sensing algorithm for MIMO-OFDM JRC systems to detect the presence of multiple targets and estimate their delay-Doppler-angle parameters. First, leveraging the observation that spatial covariance matrix is independent of target delays and Dopplers, we perform angle estimation via the MUSIC algorithm. For each estimated angle, we next formulate the radar delay-Doppler estimation as a joint carrier frequency offset (CFO) and channel estimation problem via an APES (amplitude and phase estimation) spatial filtering approach by transforming the delay-Doppler parameterized radar channel into an unstructured form. To account for the presence of multiple targets at a given angle, we devise an iterative interference cancellation based orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) procedure, where at each iteration the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) detector is employed to form decision statistics, providing as by-products the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) of radar channels and CFOs. In the final step, target detection is performed in delay-Doppler domain using target-specific, ICI-decontaminated channel estimates over time and frequency, where CFO estimates are utilized to resolve Doppler ambiguities, thereby turning ICI from foe to friend. The proposed algorithm can further exploit the ICI effect to introduce an additional dimension (namely, CFO) for target resolvability, which enables resolving targets located at the same delay-Doppler-angle cell. Simulation results illustrate the ICI exploitation capability of the proposed approach and showcase its superior detection and estimation performance in high-mobility scenarios over conventional methods.