High-SNR Channel Capacity for Communication Over Radar Waveforms

Abstract

We apply recent theory in the high-SNR estimation of channel capacity to study how much information may be encoded in radar pulse waveforms. Waveforms are constrained to those which admit a high-gain, low-sidelobe pulse compression filter. Using simple numerical methods, we compute the high-SNR capacity of a Gaussian channel using such a waveform alphabet. The resulting tradeoff curves indicate a notably favorable theoretical tradeoff space between signal processing performance and high-SNR channel capacity.