Towards a performance bound on MIMO DFRC systems

TL;DR

This paper derives an analytical performance bound for MIMO DFRC systems, revealing the tradeoff between radar and communication functions and providing waveform design strategies in simplified scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces the first analytical performance bound for MIMO DFRC systems and proposes waveform design strategies to optimize the tradeoff.

Findings

Established a performance bound under radar constraints.

Identified conditions for energy sharing between radar and communication.

Provided waveform design strategies to achieve the bound.

Abstract

It is a fundamental problem to analyse the performance bound of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) systems. To this end, we derive a performance bound on the communication function under a constraint on radar performance. To facilitate the analysis, we consider a toy example, in which there is only one down-link user with a single receive antenna and one radar target. In such a simplified case, we obtain an analytical expression for the performance bound and the corresponding waveform design strategy to achieve the bound. The results reveal a tradeoff between communication and radar performance, and a condition when the transmitted energy can be shared between these two functions.