Sparse Array Design for Dual-Function Radar-Communications System

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel sparse array design for dual-function radar-communications that optimizes beam shaping and user signal quality while considering power constraints, using an efficient optimization approach.

Contribution

It introduces a new formulation for sparse array design with joint-sparsity regularization and solves it with a parallelizable ADMM method, improving power efficiency.

Findings

The proposed method effectively shapes radar beams and supports multiple users.

Numerical results show the approach outperforms existing methods in power efficiency.

The algorithm is suitable for parallel implementation, enhancing computational efficiency.

Abstract

The problem of sparse array design for dual-function radar-communications is investigated. Our goal is to design a sparse array which can simultaneously shape desired beam responses and serve multiple downlink users with the required signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio levels. Besides, we also take into account the limitation of the radiated power by each antenna. The problem is formulated as a quadratically constrained quadratic program with a joint-sparsity-promoting regularization, which is NP-hard. The resulting problem is solved by the consensus alternating direction method of multipliers, which enjoys parallel implementation. Numerical simulations exhibit the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method which leads to a more power-efficient solution.