A Novel Waveform for a Joint Radar and Communication System

In the last years there is a trend to combine different RF systems to reduce the hardware costs on one hand side and to offer the customers a more comprehensive system. One of these possible mergers can be found in the area of communication and radar. There are two possibilities of realization here. Besides the temporal separation between communication and radar operation, where the optimal waveforms for the respective operating mode can be used, it is of great interest to operate these two tasks simultaneously. In this case, dedicated waveforms are necessary to achieve a good compromise between achievable data rate and range resolution / low Side-Lobe Level (SLL) after pulse compression to detect weak targets. This paper presents a novel waveform that can find use for a simultaneous radar and communications operation. Theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed integrated waveform performs well and meets practical requirements.