Energy-efficient Time-modulated Beam-forming for Joint Communication-Radar Systems

TL;DR

This paper proposes a single-sideband structure for time-modulated arrays in joint communication-radar systems to enhance energy efficiency, addressing inherent sideband radiation energy loss with a new reconfigurable beam steering method.

Contribution

It introduces a novel single-sideband TMA design and derives a closed-form expression for energy efficiency, improving energy management in JCR systems.

Findings

The proposed structure effectively reduces energy loss due to sideband radiation.

Theoretical expressions accurately predict energy efficiency, validated by simulations.

Reconfigurable beam steering enhances system flexibility and performance.

Abstract

To alleviate the shortage of spectral resources as well as to reduce the weight, volume, and power consumption of wireless systems, joint communication-radar (JCR) systems have become a focus of interest in both civil and military fields. JCR systems based on time-modulated arrays (TMAs) constitute an attractive solution as a benefit of their high degree of beam steering freedom, low cost, and high accuracy. However, their sideband radiation results in energy loss, which is an inherent drawback. Hence the energy-efficiency optimization of TMA-based JCR systems is of salient importance, but most of the existing TMA energy-efficiency optimization methods do not apply to JCR systems. To circumvent their problems, a single-sideband structure is designed for flexibly reconfigurable energy-efficient TMA beam steering. First, some preliminaries on single-sideband TMAs are introduced. Then, a closed-form expression is derived for characterizing the energy efficiency. Finally, the theoretical results are validated by simulations.