Periodic Reporting for period 1 - OTFS-RADCOM (A New Waveform for Joint Radar and Communications Beyond 5G)
Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2022-08-31
Increasingly larger frequencies are being used for wireless communication systems. As a result, wireless communication services are getting very close to short-range radar frequency bands, which include both automotive and indoor personal radars. The coexistence of radars and communication devices in the same spectrum in next-generation networks may therefore lead to mutual interference that will compromise radar safety and communication throughput. In such an environment, interference from radar to communication and communication to radar, as well as radar mutual interference should be considered. As radars tend to use relatively large powers to overcome the round-trip path loss, they may cause error bursts to communication data. Conversely, data communication interference will be interpreted as extra noise for radar signal processing, thereby limiting their performance. The OTFS-RADCOM project addresses the problem of mutual interference in spectrally congested wireless environments, such as vehicular networks, via a novel co-design of radar and communications systems by implementing both functionalities on a single hardware with a joint Orthogonal Time-Frequency-Space (OTFS) waveform. Such dual-functional waveforms can perform radar sensing and communications simultaneously and hold great potential for beyond 5G networks in terms of mitigating interference and enabling efficient spectrum utilization.
Radars and communication systems are integral to modern cars from the perspective of traffic safety and efficiency. To achieve situational awareness and navigate safely in traffic scenarios, vehicles require accurate position information of surrounding objects, such as trucks, cyclists, pedestrians and other (static and mobile) vehicles. To this end, multiple radars are deployed on different sides of modern vehicles to sense the environment and take necessary control actions. In addition, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications, including vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), constitute a crucial technology for a variety of active safety and traffic management applications (e.g. to broadcast cooperative awareness messages and location/velocity information of the transmitting vehicle, vehicle platooning, cooperative automated driving, extended sensing). These two technologies, radar and V2X communications, provide an intelligent transportation system (ITS) service for the society by significantly reducing the number of accidents and enabling efficient resource usage (fuel consumption, time, labor, etc.). Hence, it is important to mitigate the interference between radar and communications to ensure proper functioning of both systems. The OTFS-RADCOM project aims to solve this highly challenging interference problem via dual-functional system and waveform design on a joint hardware platform.
The main objective of this project is to design a high-performance integrated radar-communications system for vehicular safety applications that can simultaneously perform radar sensing to detect the objects in the environment and communicate with other vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists and traffic infrastructures to provide cooperative situational awareness. The key idea is to turn the problem of spectral co-existence into an advantage: rather than considering radar and communications as two separate systems competing for the same frequency resources, this project aims to co-design the two systems on a single hardware, which brings spectrum/energy/hardware efficiency and mitigates mutual interference, thereby providing highly reliable sensing and increasing traffic safety.
Radars and communication systems are integral to modern cars from the perspective of traffic safety and efficiency. To achieve situational awareness and navigate safely in traffic scenarios, vehicles require accurate position information of surrounding objects, such as trucks, cyclists, pedestrians and other (static and mobile) vehicles. To this end, multiple radars are deployed on different sides of modern vehicles to sense the environment and take necessary control actions. In addition, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications, including vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), constitute a crucial technology for a variety of active safety and traffic management applications (e.g. to broadcast cooperative awareness messages and location/velocity information of the transmitting vehicle, vehicle platooning, cooperative automated driving, extended sensing). These two technologies, radar and V2X communications, provide an intelligent transportation system (ITS) service for the society by significantly reducing the number of accidents and enabling efficient resource usage (fuel consumption, time, labor, etc.). Hence, it is important to mitigate the interference between radar and communications to ensure proper functioning of both systems. The OTFS-RADCOM project aims to solve this highly challenging interference problem via dual-functional system and waveform design on a joint hardware platform.
The main objective of this project is to design a high-performance integrated radar-communications system for vehicular safety applications that can simultaneously perform radar sensing to detect the objects in the environment and communicate with other vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists and traffic infrastructures to provide cooperative situational awareness. The key idea is to turn the problem of spectral co-existence into an advantage: rather than considering radar and communications as two separate systems competing for the same frequency resources, this project aims to co-design the two systems on a single hardware, which brings spectrum/energy/hardware efficiency and mitigates mutual interference, thereby providing highly reliable sensing and increasing traffic safety.
A high-accuracy and high-rate joint radar-communications (RadCom) system for vehicular applications has been developed using the OTFS modulation scheme. The system can be deployed on vehicles to detect both static (e.g. parking cars, trees, walls) and dynamic objects (e.g. cars, cyclists) while simultaneously communicating with other vehicles and traffic infrastructures.
Considering the different stages of OTFS modulation and demodulation, we have derived received signal models for single-input single-output (SISO) architectures under a time-varying channel model for radar and communications, taking into account the inter-symbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI) effects in a rigorous manner. We have also extended the models to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels to study channel properties in delay-Doppler-angle domains. In addition, novel OTFS radar signal models and detection/estimation algorithms have been developed and an ISI/ICI exploitation approach has been devised to surpass the standard ambiguity limits in range and velocity estimation of existing multi-carrier systems, enabling detection of far-away and high-speed targets. Moreover, waveform optimization has been performed to achieve a favorable trade-off between radar and communications, which allows for flexible adjustment of trade-offs depending on the type of application (radar-critical or communication-critical).
The main results achieved so far can be summarized as follows:
* 11 journal publications in top-tier venues (IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics on Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters)
* 7 conference publications in international conferences (IEEE ICASSP, IEEE ICC, IEEE PIMRC)
* 1 invited technical article in the newsletter of IEEE ISAC-ETI
* Co-supervision of two MS students (graduated June and September 2022) on AI-based design of integrated communications, sensing and localization systems
* Co-supervision of two PhD students (one graduated June 2022, another ongoing)
* Presentations delivered to local industry (Ericsson, Qamcom, Volvo, Veoneer) in Swedish Vinnova project meetings
* Follow-up funding application for the project FFI-RADCOM2 (Joint Radar and Communication for Next-Generation Automotive Applications), granted 9.6 MSEK for the period between 2022-01-01 and 2023-12-31.
Considering the different stages of OTFS modulation and demodulation, we have derived received signal models for single-input single-output (SISO) architectures under a time-varying channel model for radar and communications, taking into account the inter-symbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI) effects in a rigorous manner. We have also extended the models to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels to study channel properties in delay-Doppler-angle domains. In addition, novel OTFS radar signal models and detection/estimation algorithms have been developed and an ISI/ICI exploitation approach has been devised to surpass the standard ambiguity limits in range and velocity estimation of existing multi-carrier systems, enabling detection of far-away and high-speed targets. Moreover, waveform optimization has been performed to achieve a favorable trade-off between radar and communications, which allows for flexible adjustment of trade-offs depending on the type of application (radar-critical or communication-critical).
The main results achieved so far can be summarized as follows:
* 11 journal publications in top-tier venues (IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics on Signal Processing, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters)
* 7 conference publications in international conferences (IEEE ICASSP, IEEE ICC, IEEE PIMRC)
* 1 invited technical article in the newsletter of IEEE ISAC-ETI
* Co-supervision of two MS students (graduated June and September 2022) on AI-based design of integrated communications, sensing and localization systems
* Co-supervision of two PhD students (one graduated June 2022, another ongoing)
* Presentations delivered to local industry (Ericsson, Qamcom, Volvo, Veoneer) in Swedish Vinnova project meetings
* Follow-up funding application for the project FFI-RADCOM2 (Joint Radar and Communication for Next-Generation Automotive Applications), granted 9.6 MSEK for the period between 2022-01-01 and 2023-12-31.
A novel co-design of radar and communications systems has been developed by implementing both functionalities on a single hardware platform via a joint Orthogonal Time-Frequency-Space (OTFS) waveform. To go beyond the state-of-the-art, novel RadCom waveform optimization and radar signal processing schemes have been proposed, showcasing significant performance improvements in both radar key performance indicators (KPIs), such as detection probability and accuracy, and communication KPIs, such as data rate. The results of this project have the potential to drastically improve energy/spectrum/hardware efficiency of RadCom devices, increase traffic safety, efficiency and environmental friendliness, having direct practical impact on the daily lives of the general public.