No Arabic abstract
The convergence of radar sensing and communication applications in the terahertz (THz) band has been envisioned as a promising technology, since it incorporates terabit-per-second (Tbps) data transmission and mm-level radar sensing in a spectrum- and cost-efficient manner, by sharing both the frequency and hardware resources. However, the joint THz radar and communication (JRC) system faces considerable challenges, due to the peculiarities of the THz channel and front ends. To this end, the waveform design for THz-JRC systems with ultra-broad bandwidth is investigated in this paper. Firstly, by considering THz-JRC systems based on the co-existence concept, where both functions operate in a time-domain duplex (TDD) manner, a novel multi-subband quasi-perfect (MS-QP) sequence, composed of multiple Zadoff-Chu (ZC) perfect subsequences on different subbands, is proposed for target sensing, which achieves accurate target ranging and velocity estimation, whilst only requiring cost-efficient low-rate analog-to-digital converters (A/Ds) for sequence detection. Furthermore, the root index of each ZC subsequence of the MS-QP sequence is designed to eliminate the influence of doppler shift on the THz radar sensing. Finally, a data-embedded MS-QP (DE-MS-QP) waveform is constructed through time-domain extension of the MS-QP sequence, generating null frequency points on each subband for data transmission. Unlike the THz-JRC system in TDD manner, the proposed DE-MS-QP waveform enables simultaneous interference-free sensing and communication, whilst inheriting all the merits from MS-QP sequences. Numerical results validate the superiority of the proposed waveforms in terms of sensing performance, hardware cost and flexible resource allocation over their conventional counterparts.
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a promising technology to fully utilize the precious spectrum and hardware in wireless systems, which has attracted significant attentions recently. This paper studies ISAC for the important and challenging monostatic setup, where one single ISAC node wishes to simultaneously sense a radar target while communicating with a communication receiver. Different from most existing schemes that rely on either radar-centric half-duplex (HD) pulsed transmission with information embedding that suffers from extremely low communication rate, or communication-centric waveform that suffers from degraded sensing performance, we propose a novel full-duplex (FD) ISAC scheme that utilizes the waiting time of conventional pulsed radars to transmit dedicated communication signals. Compared to radar-centric pulsed waveform with information embedding, the proposed design can drastically increase the communication rate, and also mitigate the sensing eclipsing and near-target blind range issues, as long as the self-interference (SI) is effectively suppressed. On the other hand, compared to communication-centric ISAC waveform, the proposed design has better auto-correlation property as it preserves the classic radar waveform for sensing. Performance analysis is developed by taking into account the residual SI, in terms of the probability of detection and ambiguity function for sensing, as well as the spectrum efficiency for communication. Numerical results are provided to show the significant performance gain of our proposed design over benchmark schemes.
In this paper, we study optimal waveform design to maximize mutual information (MI) for a joint communication and (radio) sensing (JCAS, a.k.a., radar-communication) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) downlink system. We consider a typical packet-based signal structure which includes training and data symbols. We first derive the conditional MI for both sensing and communication under correlated channels by considering the training overhead and channel estimation error (CEE). Then, we derive a lower bound for the channel estimation error and optimize the power allocation between the training and data symbols to minimize the CEE. Based on the optimal power allocation, we provide optimal waveform design methods for three scenarios, including maximizing MI for communication only and for sensing only, and maximizing a weighted sum MI for both communication and sensing. We also present extensive simulation results that provide insights on waveform design and validate the effectiveness of the proposed designs.
Frequency-hopping (FH) MIMO radar-based dual-function radar communication (FH-MIMO DFRC) enables communication symbol rate to exceed radar pulse repetition frequency, which requires accurate estimations of timing offset and channel parameters. The estimations, however, are challenging due to unknown, fast-changing hopping frequencies and the multiplicative coupling between timing offset and channel parameters. In this paper, we develop accurate methods for a single-antenna communication receiver to estimate timing offset and channel for FH-MIMO DFRC. First, we design a novel FH-MIMO radar waveform, which enables a communication receiver to estimate the hopping frequency sequence (HFS) used by radar, instead of acquiring it from radar. Importantly, the novel waveform incurs no degradation to radar ranging performance. Then, via capturing distinct HFS features, we develop two estimators for timing offset and derive mean squared error lower bound of each estimator. Using the bounds, we design an HFS that renders both estimators applicable. Furthermore, we develop an accurate channel estimation method, reusing the single hop for timing offset estimation. Validated by simulations, the accurate channel estimates attained by the proposed methods enable the communication performance of DFRC to approach that achieved based on perfect timing and ideal knowledge of channel.
The problem of data-driven joint design of transmitted waveform and detector in a radar system is addressed in this paper. We propose two novel learning-based approaches to waveform and detector design based on end-to-end training of the radar system. The first approach consists of alternating supervised training of the detector for a fixed waveform and reinforcement learning of the transmitter for a fixed detector. In the second approach, the transmitter and detector are trained simultaneously. Various operational waveform constraints, such as peak-to-average-power ratio (PAR) and spectral compatibility, are incorporated into the design. Unlike traditional radar design methods that rely on rigid mathematical models with limited applicability, it is shown that radar learning can be robustified by training the detector with synthetic data generated from multiple statistical models of the environment. Theoretical considerations and results show that the proposed methods are capable of adapting the transmitted waveform to environmental conditions while satisfying design constraints.
In this paper, we consider the design of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmitter which simultaneously functions as a MIMO radar and a base station for downlink multiuser communications. In addition to a power constraint, we require the covariance of the transmit waveform be equal to a given optimal covariance for MIMO radar, to guarantee the radar performance. With this constraint, we formulate and solve the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) balancing problem for multiuser transmit beamforming via convex optimization. Considering that the interference cannot be completely eliminated with this constraint, we introduce dirty paper coding (DPC) to further cancel the interference, and formulate the SINR balancing and sum rate maximization problem in the DPC regime. Although both of the two problems are non-convex, we show that they can be reformulated to convex optimizations via the Lagrange and downlink-uplink duality. In addition, we propose gradient projection based algorithms to solve the equivalent dual problem of SINR balancing, in both transmit beamforming and DPC regimes. The simulation results demonstrate significant performance improvement of DPC over transmit beamforming, and also indicate that the degrees of freedom for the communication transmitter is restricted by the rank of the covariance.