Joint radar communication system design based on filter bank multicarrier modulation scheme

Abstract Since orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals are sensitive to Doppler shift, OFDM signals with cyclic prefix (CP) not only reduce the communication rate but also result in symmetric pseudo peaks in the ambiguity function of the radar, which eventually lead to the degradation of the performance of the joint radar communication system (JRCS). In this study, a novel JRCS is proposed based on the filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) waveform for the inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging and communication system. On the one hand, FBMC waveforms are capable of low orthogonality between subcarriers, which can counter Doppler and multipath effects. On the other hand, FBMC waveforms do not require CP, so the false targets can be avoided and spectral efficiency can be improved. The influence of multipath effect and Doppler shift on FBMC waveform in an integrated system is analysed in detail, and a Doppler compensation algorithm suitable for FBMC‐integrated waveform is proposed. The phase error caused by target motion can be iteratively compensated to obtain a well‐focussed ISAR image. Finally, considering the ISAR image entropy after motion compensation as the evaluation metric, extensive simulation experiments verify the noise robustness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Compared with the conventional OFDM and CP‐OFDM schemes, the simulation verifies that the proposed waveform design and processing method has better performance in the ISAR imaging and communication integrated system.