MIMO waveform design combined with constellation mapping for the integrated system of radar and communication

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel technique to integrate the dual functions of radar and communication in a single platform, sharing the same frequency spectrum. The proposed technique utilizes the constellation mapping method to embed information symbols in the communication direction via transmit beamforming. By minimizing the integrated sidelobe level (ISL) for transmit beamforming, the system can achieve lower sidelobe level (SLL) for radar detection. The transmit level in the communication direction is controlled to ensure dependable communication transmission, taking into account the communication channel between the integrated platform and the communication station (i.e. communication distance and channel fading). We also investigate the communication performance in bit error rate (BER) with respect to angular error in transmit beamforming and resulting pointing error towards communication station. It is shown that our proposed method has better performance in BER and lower probability of interception (LPI) for communication transmission. Simulation results are presented to verify the theoretical derivations.