The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Joint radar and communication design: Applications, state-of-the-art, and the road ahead

Joint radar and communication design: Applications, state-of-the-art, and the road ahead
Joint radar and communication design: Applications, state-of-the-art, and the road ahead

Sharing of the frequency bands between radar and communication systems has attracted substantial attention, as it can avoid under-utilization of otherwise permanently allocated spectral resources, thus improving efficiency. Further, there is increasing demand for radar and communication systems that share the hardware platform as well as the frequency band, as this not only decongests the spectrum, but also benefits both sensing and signaling operations via the full cooperation between both functionalities. Nevertheless, the success of spectrum and hardware sharing between radar and communication systems critically depends on high-quality joint radar and communication designs. In the first part of this paper, we overview the research progress in the areas of radar-communication coexistence and dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) systems, with particular emphasis on application scenarios and technical approaches. In the second part, we propose a novel transceiver architecture and frame structure for a DFRC base station (BS) operating in the millimeter wave (mmWave) band, using the hybrid analog-digital (HAD) beamforming technique. We assume that the BS is serving a multi-antenna user equipment (UE) over a mmWave channel, and at the same time it actively detects targets. The targets also play the role of scatterers for the communication signal. In that framework, we propose a novel scheme for joint target search and communication channel estimation, which relies on omni-directional pilot signals generated by the HAD structure. Given a fully-digital communication precoder and a desired radar transmit beampattern, we propose to design the analog and digital precoders under non-convex constant-modulus (CM) and power constraints, such that the BS can formulate narrow beams towards all the targets, while pre-equalizing the impact of the communication channel. Furthermore, we design a HAD receiver that can simultaneously process signals from the UE and echo waves from the targets. By tracking the angular variation of the targets, we show that it is possible to recover the target echoes and mitigate the resulting interference to the UE signals, even when the radar and communication signals share the same signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The feasibility and efficiency of the proposed approaches in realizing DFRC are verified via numerical simulations. Finally, the paper concludes with an overview of the open problems in the research field of communication and radar spectrum sharing (CRSS).

Radar-communication spectrum sharing, dual-functional radar-communication, hybrid beamforming, mmWave
0090-6778
3834-3862
Liu, Fan
37818a1c-e047-4342-b996-75c49fb443f7
Masouros, Christos
f7d74183-a31b-412e-8a75-1a942aa156d8
Petropulu, Athina P.
24f3f757-efd1-40e5-9240-a774889f1d7f
Griffiths, Hugh
718c8704-e775-45f3-b75e-2eab0eafa74a
Hanzo, Lajos
66e7266f-3066-4fc0-8391-e000acce71a1
Liu, Fan
37818a1c-e047-4342-b996-75c49fb443f7
Masouros, Christos
f7d74183-a31b-412e-8a75-1a942aa156d8
Petropulu, Athina P.
24f3f757-efd1-40e5-9240-a774889f1d7f
Griffiths, Hugh
718c8704-e775-45f3-b75e-2eab0eafa74a
Hanzo, Lajos
66e7266f-3066-4fc0-8391-e000acce71a1

Liu, Fan, Masouros, Christos, Petropulu, Athina P., Griffiths, Hugh and Hanzo, Lajos (2020) Joint radar and communication design: Applications, state-of-the-art, and the road ahead. IEEE Transactions on Communications, 68 (6), 3834-3862, [8999605]. (doi:10.1109/TCOMM.2020.2973976).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Sharing of the frequency bands between radar and communication systems has attracted substantial attention, as it can avoid under-utilization of otherwise permanently allocated spectral resources, thus improving efficiency. Further, there is increasing demand for radar and communication systems that share the hardware platform as well as the frequency band, as this not only decongests the spectrum, but also benefits both sensing and signaling operations via the full cooperation between both functionalities. Nevertheless, the success of spectrum and hardware sharing between radar and communication systems critically depends on high-quality joint radar and communication designs. In the first part of this paper, we overview the research progress in the areas of radar-communication coexistence and dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) systems, with particular emphasis on application scenarios and technical approaches. In the second part, we propose a novel transceiver architecture and frame structure for a DFRC base station (BS) operating in the millimeter wave (mmWave) band, using the hybrid analog-digital (HAD) beamforming technique. We assume that the BS is serving a multi-antenna user equipment (UE) over a mmWave channel, and at the same time it actively detects targets. The targets also play the role of scatterers for the communication signal. In that framework, we propose a novel scheme for joint target search and communication channel estimation, which relies on omni-directional pilot signals generated by the HAD structure. Given a fully-digital communication precoder and a desired radar transmit beampattern, we propose to design the analog and digital precoders under non-convex constant-modulus (CM) and power constraints, such that the BS can formulate narrow beams towards all the targets, while pre-equalizing the impact of the communication channel. Furthermore, we design a HAD receiver that can simultaneously process signals from the UE and echo waves from the targets. By tracking the angular variation of the targets, we show that it is possible to recover the target echoes and mitigate the resulting interference to the UE signals, even when the radar and communication signals share the same signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The feasibility and efficiency of the proposed approaches in realizing DFRC are verified via numerical simulations. Finally, the paper concludes with an overview of the open problems in the research field of communication and radar spectrum sharing (CRSS).

Text
Joint Radar and Communication Design - Applications, State-of-the-art, and the Road Ahead - Accepted Manuscript
Download (6MB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 9 February 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 14 February 2020
Published date: June 2020
Additional Information: Funding Information: 2020. This work was supported in part by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie mix of 2/3/4G technologies [1]. Meanwhile, in Germany, the Individual Fellowship under Grant No. 793345, in part by the Engineering regulator Bundesnetzagentur revealed that the total in the EP/S026622/1,and inpartby theUK MODUniversityDefenceResearchandPhysical SciencesResearchCouncil(EPSRC)oftheUKGrantnumber auction of 4 frequency bands for mobile network operators Collaboration (UDRC) in Signal Processing. L. Hanzo would like to exceeded e5 billion [2]. The US Federal Communications acknowledge the financial support of the EPSRC projects EP/Noo4558/1, Commission (FCC) completed its first 5G auction, with a ResearchFundGrantaswellasoftheEuropeanResearchCouncil’sAdvancedEP/PO34284/1,COALESCE,oftheRoyal Society’sGlobalChallenges sale of 28 GHz spectrum licences raising $702 million [3]. Fellow Grant QuantCom. A. P. Petropulu would like to acknowledge By 2025, the number of connected devices worldwide is the financial support of the US National Science Foundation under grant predicted to be 75 billion [4], which further emphasizes the approvingitforpublicationwasD.I.Kim.(Correspondingauthor:FanLiu.)CCF-1526908.Theassociateeditorcoordinatingthereviewofthisarticleand impending need for extra spectral resources. In view of this, Fan Liu, Christos Masouros, and Hugh Griffiths are with the Depart-network providers are seeking opportunities to reuse spectrum ment of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, currently restricted to other applications. The radar bands ieee.org;h.griffiths@ieee.org).LondonWC1E7JE, U.K.(e-mail: fan.liu@ucl.ac.uk; chris.masouros@ are among at the best candidates to be shared with various Athina P. Petropulu is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-communication systems due to the large portions of spectrum neering,RutgersUniversity,TheStateUniversityofNewJersey,Piscataway, available at radar frequencies [5]. Lajos Hanzois withthe School ofElectronics and Computer Sci-NJ08854USA(e-mail:athinap@rutgers.edu). Radar has been developed for decades since its birth in ence, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, U.K. (e-mail: the first half of the 20th century. Modern radar systems are lh@ecs.soton.ac.uk). deployed worldwide, with a variety of applications including onlineathttp://ieeexplore.ieee.org.Colorversions ofoneormoreof air traffic control (ATC), geophysical monitoring, weather Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCOMM.2020.2973976 observation as well as surveillance for defense and security. 0090-6778 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information. Publisher Copyright: © 1972-2012 IEEE.
Keywords: Radar-communication spectrum sharing, dual-functional radar-communication, hybrid beamforming, mmWave

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 438417
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/438417
ISSN: 0090-6778
PURE UUID: d8873fb1-657d-4b69-a03e-9369bf83b7b1
ORCID for Lajos Hanzo: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2636-5214

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 09 Mar 2020 17:33
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 02:36

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Fan Liu
Author: Christos Masouros
Author: Athina P. Petropulu
Author: Hugh Griffiths
Author: Lajos Hanzo ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×