Photonics-Assisted Joint Communication-Radar System Based on a QPSK-Sliced Linearly Frequency-Modulated Signal

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel photonics-assisted joint communication and radar system utilizing a QPSK-sliced LFM signal, demonstrating high-precision ranging, imaging, and data transmission in an experimental setup.

Contribution

It introduces a new integrated optical modulation scheme combining QPSK and LFM signals for joint communication and radar functions, with experimental validation.

Findings

Radar range detection error less than 4 cm

ISAR imaging resolution of 14.99 cm by 3.25 cm

Data transmission rate of 105.26 Mbit/s

Abstract

A photonics-assisted joint communication-radar system is proposed and experimentally demonstrated, by introducing a quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK)-sliced linearly frequency-modulated (LFM) signal. An LFM signal is carrier-suppressed single-sideband modulated onto the optical carrier in one dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) of a dual-polarization dual-parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DPol-DPMZM). The other DPMZM of the DPol-DPMZM is biased as an IQ modulator to implement QPSK modulation on the optical carrier. The polarization orthogonal optical signals from the DPol-DPMZM are further combined and detected in a photodetector to generate the QPSK-sliced LFM signal, which is used to realize efficient data transmission and high-performance radar functions including ranging and imaging. An experiment is carried out. Radar range detection with an error of less than 4 cm, ISAR imaging with a resolution of 14.99 cm*3.25 cm, and communication with a data rate of 105.26 Mbit/s are successfully verified.