Emerging Prototyping Activities in Joint Radar-Communications

TL;DR

This paper reviews emerging prototyping efforts in joint radar-communications systems, emphasizing the transition from theoretical models to hardware validation to facilitate industry adoption.

Contribution

It highlights existing prototypes in JRC, discusses design and performance challenges, and suggests future prototyping directions to bridge theory and practical implementation.

Findings

Existing prototypes reveal practical challenges in JRC implementation

Hardware validation is crucial for industry adoption of JRC techniques

Prototyping supports the development of robust and efficient JRC systems

Abstract

The previous chapters have discussed the canvas of joint radar-communications (JRC), highlighting the key approaches of radar-centric, communications-centric and dual-function radar-communications systems. Several signal processing and related aspects enabling these approaches including waveform design, resource allocation, privacy and security, and intelligent surfaces have been elaborated in detail. These topics offer comprehensive theoretical guarantees and algorithms. However, they are largely based on theoretical models. A hardware validation of these techniques would lend credence to the results while enabling their embrace by industry. To this end, this chapter presents some of the prototyping initiatives that address some salient aspects of JRC. We describe some existing prototypes to highlight the challenges in design and performance of JRC. We conclude by presenting some avenues that require prototyping support in the future.