Masked Modulation: High-Throughput Half-Duplex ISAC Transmission Waveform Design

TL;DR

This paper introduces MASked Modulation (MASM), a novel half-duplex ISAC waveform that balances high-throughput communication with effective sensing by minimizing mainlobe fluctuation, addressing limitations of existing continuous-wave and pulse-based systems.

Contribution

The paper proposes MASM, a new waveform design for half-duplex ISAC that supports high throughput and low mainlobe fluctuation, with adaptable frame-level design and optimal mask sets.

Findings

Supports ~50% duty cycle for high-throughput communication

Minimizes mainlobe fluctuation for better sensing performance

Identifies ideal transmit masks for sidelobe and fluctuation control

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) enables numerous innovative wireless applications. Communication-centric design is a practical choice for the construction of the sixth generation (6G) ISAC networks. Continuous-wave-based ISAC systems, with orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) being a representative example, suffer from the self-interference (SI) problem, and hence are less suitable for long-range sensing. On the other hand, pulse-based half-duplex ISAC systems are free of SI, but are also less favourable for high-throughput communication scenarios. In this treatise, we propose MASked Modulation (MASM), a half-duplex ISAC waveform design scheme, which minimises a range blindness metric, termed as "mainlobe fluctuation", given a duty cycle (proportional to communication throughput) constraint. In particular, MASM is capable of supporting high-throughput communication ($\sim$50% duty cycle) under mild mainlobe fluctuation. Moreover, MASM can be flexibly adapted to frame-level waveform designs by operating on the slow-time scale. In terms of optimal transmit mask design, a set of masks is shown to be ideal in the sense of sidelobe level and mainlobe fluctuation intensity.