Track-before-detect in RIS-aided Integrated Sensing and Communication

TL;DR

This paper proposes a multi-frame radar detection approach in RIS-aided integrated sensing and communication systems, enhancing spectral efficiency by joint processing of multiple scans without compromising sensing performance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-frame radar detector framework that improves spectral efficiency in RIS-assisted systems, balancing sensing and communication tradeoffs.

Findings

Numerical analysis confirms improved spectral efficiency.

Joint processing of multiple scans maintains sensing performance.

System tradeoffs are effectively evaluated.

Abstract

This study considers a base station equipped with sensing and communication capabilities, which serves a ground user and scans a portion of the sky via a passive reconfigurable intelligent surface. To achieve more favorable system tradeoffs, we utilize a multi-frame radar detector, comprising a detector, a plot-extractor, and a track-before-detect processor. The main idea proposed here is that user spectral efficiency can be enhanced by increasing the number of scans jointly processed by the multi-frame radar detector while maintaining the same sensing performance. A numerical analysis is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed solution and to evaluate the achievable system tradeoffs.