Range-Doppler Division Multiple Access for Joint Radar and Communication

Abstract

This paper presents a multiple-access procedure for joint radar and communication systems. Dedicated radar antennas transmit uplink pilots in the same time-frequency resources as the user pilots over several coherence blocks. The radar and communication channels are subsequently estimated wherein the respective systems proceed as conventional. In order to facilitate pilot reuse and mitigate interchannel interference, the radar and user pilots are modulated in time and frequency so that the channels are orthogonal in the range-Doppler domain. This allows the respective channels to be separated without mutual interference or the need to allocate dedicated radar pilots. The main advantage is the time-division duplex compatibility and the near optimal radar performance. The performance trade-offs are discussed and the method is demonstrated with numerical simulations, demonstrating a relatively unaffected EVM while simultaneously recovering the radar channel for sensing.