Joint Radar-Communication Prototype Implementing Spectral-Spatial Agility And Index Modulation

This demo shows a dual function radar and communications (DFRC) system based on multi-carrier agile frequency-modulated continuous waveforms (FMCWs) MIMO radar for vehicular applications. In this DFRC demo, we demonstrate a recently proposed scheme in which FMCW waveforms are transmitted via agilities both in the carrier frequencies and in transmit antennas of MIMO array. The digital message communicated is embedded in the combinations of carrier frequencies and the transmit antenna elements, which incorporates communication capabilities with minimal effect to the radar transmission. We design a dedicated platform for this demo, which consists of a PC, a DFRC transmitter, and a communications receiver. The PC serves as the controller and processor, which contains a set-up GUI to define parameters interactively. The DFRC transmitter and the radar receiver are implemented using a TI mmWave radar, which enables to transmit and receive the configured FMCW waveforms. The communications receiver is implemented using the receiving channel of a TI mmWave radar, which is synchronized with the transmitter. This demo has two operation modes. In hardware mode, the waveforms are transmitted over the air. The GUI allows to set the transmit messages and receive them from the communications receiver. In addition, radar senses targets in real-time, and the results are shown in the GUI. In simulation mode, we show that the proposed radar scheme achieves the same resolution performance compared with traditional automotive radar without conveying the communication message.