DFT-spread OFDM Frequency Domain Processing for Joint MIMO Radar and Communication

Inhalt:
Current trends regarding the next generation of mobile communications envision a convergence of the fields of communication and sensing. This is particularly true for mobile platforms offering rather confined installation spaces, e.g. in autonomous driving (AD) or future urban air mobility (UAM) applications. Communication systems recognize their environment through sensing functionalities and optimize their transmission power accordingly. At the same time, sensing systems implement communication features to increase bandwidth efficiency. Finding a well-suited waveform that can combine both features in one is a key aspect of current research in communication and sensing convergence. This paper investigates a frequency-domain based receiver processing scheme for using discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-spread orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) waveforms in joint communication and sensing (JCS) systems. In particular, we combine multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar with wireless communications offering spatial diversity and/or multi-user operation. The performance of the system is evaluated in terms of communication and sensing characteristics (regarding the resulting peak-to-average power ratio, PAPR, and the resulting range sidelobe levels, SLLs, respectively), and advantages compared to matched-filter based time-domain processing at the receiver are pointed out.