MIMO OFDM Dual-Function Radar-Communication Under Error Rate and Beampattern Constraints

TL;DR

This paper proposes a MIMO OFDM dual-function radar-communication system that optimizes waveform design and receive filters to balance radar sensing and communication quality under various constraints, using a unified and iterative optimization approach.

Contribution

It introduces a novel unified design framework for MIMO OFDM DFRC systems that accommodates multiple radar objectives and guarantees communication QoS through a suboptimal optimization algorithm.

Findings

Effective waveform and filter design under constraints

Balanced radar sensing and communication performance

Versatile approach for different radar objectives

Abstract

In this work we consider a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) dual-function radar-communication (DFRC) system, which senses multiple spatial directions and serves multiple users. Upon resorting to an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission format and a differential phase shift keying (DPSK) modulation, we study the design of the radiated waveforms and of the receive filters employed by the radar and the users. The approach is communication-centric, in the sense that a radar-oriented objective is optimized under constraints on the average transmit power, the power leakage towards specific directions, and the error rate of each user, thus safeguarding the communication quality of service (QoS). We adopt a unified design approach allowing a broad family of radar objectives, including both estimation- and detection-oriented merit functions. We devise a suboptimal solution based on alternating optimization of the involved variables, a convex restriction of the feasible search set, and minorization-maximization, offering a single algorithm for all of the radar merit functions in the considered family. Finally, the performance is inspected through numerical examples.