IEEE 802.11ad-Based Radar: An Approach to Joint Vehicular Communication-Radar System

TLDR

Millimeter‑wave radar is widely used in vehicles for adaptive cruise control and collision avoidance, and recent advances in isolation and self‑interference cancellation motivate its extension to 60 GHz systems. The paper proposes an IEEE 802.11ad‑based radar for long‑range radar applications at 60 GHz. The system uses the Golay‑sequence preamble of IEEE 802.11ad single‑carrier frames to create a joint radar–communication waveform, implements full‑duplex operation, and applies modified IEEE 802.11ad channel estimation and synchronization techniques in single‑ and multi‑frame receivers for target detection, range, and velocity estimation. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed radar achieves gigabit‑per‑second data rates while delivering centimeter‑level range and velocity accuracy, detecting targets with >99.99 % probability and a 10⁻⁶ false‑alarm rate up to ~200 m, satisfying LRR accuracy requirements.

Abstract

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar is widely used in vehicles for applications such as adaptive cruise control and collision avoidance. In this paper, we propose an IEEE 802.11ad-based radar for long-range radar (LRR) applications at the 60 GHz unlicensed band. We exploit the preamble of a single-carrier physical layer frame, which consists of Golay complementary sequences with good correlation properties that make it suitable for radar. This system enables a joint waveform for automotive radar and a potential mmWave vehicular communication system based on the mmWave consumer wireless local area network standard, allowing hardware reuse. To formulate an integrated framework of vehicle-to-vehicle communication and LRR, we make typical assumptions for LRR applications, incorporating the full duplex radar operation. This new feature is motivated by the recent development of systems with sufficient isolation and self-interference cancellation. We develop single- and multi-frame radar receiver algorithms for target detection as well as range and velocity estimation for both single- and multi-target scenarios. Our proposed radar processing algorithms leverage channel estimation and time-frequency synchronization techniques used in a conventional IEEE 802.11ad receiver with minimal modifications. Analysis and simulations show that in a single-target scenario, a gigabits-per-second data rate is achieved simultaneously with cm-level range accuracy and cm/s-level velocity accuracy. The target vehicle is detected with a high probability (above 99.99$\%$) at a low false alarm rate of 10$^{-6}$ for an equivalent isotropically radiated power of 40 dBm up to a vehicle separation distance of about 200 m. The proposed IEEE 802.11ad-based radar meets the minimum accuracy/resolution requirement of range and velocity estimates for LRR applications.