Coordinated multipoint operation for joint communication and radar sensing - JCRS CoMP

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Thomas Dallmann; Professor Dr.-Ing. Giovanni del Galdo; Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Knott; Professor Dr.-Ing. Reiner Thomä
• Subject Area: Communication Technology and Networks, High-Frequency Technology and Photonic Systems, Signal Processing and Machine Learning for Information Technology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 504990291

Joint communication and sensing has recently gained increasing interest on the road towards future mobile radio. This is especially true for Joint Communication and Radar Sensing (JCRS). JCRS adds valuable capabilities to mobile radio networks, which opens completely new applications beyond communication and wideband network access in various 5G/ 6G vertical industries for localization of passive objects. The advantage comes with the reuse of mobile radio and network resources, which eventually safes resources and reduces costs. At the same time, the ubiquitous availability of mobile radio networks immediately provides a pervasive radar-sensing network with unprecedented functionality. Multipoint JCRS constitutes a widely distributed MIMO radar network, in which the inherent capabilities of the mobile communication network are used for both radar sensing and data transfer and fusion. The distributed nature supports gaining a “global” radar view within an area of interest. This implies cooperation of the multiple transmitters (radar illuminators) and/or receivers (radar sensors). Multipoint illumination by joint transmission eventually results in focusing of the transmit signal at the target. Multipoint radio access schemes include waveform and radio resource adaptation, distributed acquisition and detection, as well as multiple sensor access in order to avoid multi-sensor interference and to allow for real-time, low latency acquisition of dynamic target scenarios. The prerequisite of Coordinated Multi-Point operation for JCRS (JCRS-CoMP) is multipoint radio synchronization. We need different accuracy levels of synchronization, which will range from coarse time-frame coordination for media access over fine delay synchronization to allow for precise time-of-flight target localization up to carrier phase synchronization for coherent target illumination. Another essential ingredient for JCRS-COMP is illuminator signal predistortion, which stands for fine synchronization control and radio adaption for maximizing radar performance and clutter resilience in highly dynamic scenarios. Coordinated Multi-Point transmission was already proposed and standardized for LTE-A as an efficient approach to achieve higher spectral efficiency and improved coverage at cell edges. However, radar sensing performance was not yet considered. The general goal of this project is to introduce the radar view into CoMP schemes for future mobile radio systems. This way we will break with the precedent that mobile radio and radar networks have developed over decades independently. We aim to fuse both views. However, we investigate how to design typical mobile radio system architecture and access schemes in an optimum way to make future mobile radio an unprecedented JCRS network. We put focus on distributed multipoint architectures on the infrastructure side as well as on multiple mobile sensors with direct sensor-to-sensor communication in the sidelink.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants