Demo Proposal For Joint Radar And Communication System Based On Index Modulation

In this demo we present a radar system capable of transmitting digital communication messages to a remote receiver using a transmission scheme, operating as a dual-function radar-communication (DFRC) system. Many applications, such as vehicular systems, utilize both radar and communication functionalities. These systems share many similarities in hardware architecture and signal processing methods, which motivates the study of DFRC systems, i.e., systems implementing both radar and communication functionalities using the same platform. Such joint designs have several benefits, including a reduction of the system volume, reduced cost, and the ability to naturally mitigate the cross interference between radar and communications. Therefore, the joint design of radar and communication systems has been the focus of a growing research attention. In this demo, we present an implementation of a DFRC scheme recently proposed in [1]-[2]. This scheme combines frequency agile radar with index modulation for conveying digital messages at minimal degradation to the radar performance. In the proposed demo we implement the DFRC transmitter while simulating the radar target using a radar echo generator (REG). Our demonstration platform consists of a control unit implementing over-the-air joint-waveform signaling using a dedicated antenna array of 16 elements capable of both receiving and transmitting, as well as an REG which generates the reflecting radar echos for controllable targets. Using a dedicated GUI, our demo will illustrate the operation of the DFRC system, computing its radar and communication performance measures in real-time, and demonstrating the feasibility of the concept of index-modulation based DFRC systems. [1] T. Huang, N. Shlezinger, X. Xu, Y. Liu, and Y. C. Eldar, “MAJoRCom: A dual-function radar communication system using index modulation,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.04223, 2019. [2] T. Huang, N. Shlezinger, X. Xu, D. Ma, Y. Liu, and Y. C. Eldar, “Multi-carrier agile phased array radar,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.06289, 2019