Joint Multi-User Communication and MIMO Radar Through Full-Duplex Hybrid Beamforming

Abstract

Performing joint communication and sensing in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is important for efficiently utilizing the crowded spectrum, through providing high capacity links to the communication users, while simultaneously facilitating improved sensing capabilities. Towards this, we optimize the transmit beamforming to provide concurrent multiple beams for communication and sensing, while effectively mitigating the cross-interference between different communication users. Moreover, the receive beamforming is optimized to observe reflections from the radar targets, while also canceling the self-interference due to the required full-duplex operation. We demonstrate that MIMO processing can separate the communication users and radar targets in the angular domain. Additionally, the super-resolution provided by angle estimation allows differentiating between radar targets having the same range, but with minuscule angular separation.