On The Robustness of Channel Allocation in Joint Radar And Communication Systems: An Auction Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust auction-based channel allocation method for joint radar and communication systems that enhances covert operations and incentivizes spectrum sharing, even under bid uncertainties.

Contribution

It proposes a novel auction mechanism that ensures truthfulness, rationality, and robustness against bid perturbations for spectrum allocation in covert JRC systems.

Findings

The auction mechanism is computationally efficient.

It maintains properties like truthfulness and individual rationality.

Simulations demonstrate robustness and effectiveness in uncertain environments.

Abstract

Joint radar and communication (JRC) is a promising technique for spectrum re-utilization, which enables radar sensing and data transmission to operate on the same frequencies and the same devices. However, due to the multi-objective property of JRC systems, channel allocation to JRC nodes should be carefully designed to maximize system performance. Additionally, because of the broadcast nature of wireless signals, a watchful adversary, i.e., a warden, can detect ongoing transmissions and attack the system. Thus, we develop a covert JRC system that minimizes the detection probability by wardens, in which friendly jammers are deployed to improve the covertness of the JRC nodes during radar sensing and data transmission operations. Furthermore, we propose a robust multi-item auction design for channel allocation for such a JRC system that considers the uncertainty in bids. The proposed auction mechanism achieves the properties of truthfulness, individual rationality, budget feasibility, and computational efficiency. The simulations clearly show the benefits of our design to support covert JRC systems and to provide incentive to the JRC nodes in obtaining spectrum, in which the auction-based channel allocation mechanism is robust against perturbations in the bids, which is highly effective for JRC nodes working in uncertain environments.