Space-Frequency Modulation based Waveform Design for Radar-Communication Integrated System

Space-frequency modulation (SFM) technology enables the mapping of one-dimensional communication data onto both spatial and frequency dimensions, making it suitable for the co-design of integrated radar and communication waveforms. In this paper, we propose an SFM-based integrated waveform, which significantly improves the communication rate and peak side-lobe ratio performance compared to the existing design. To recover the embedded communication data in the proposed waveform, we introduce a maximum likelihood (ML) demodulation scheme as well as a low-complexity suboptimal demodulation scheme. Finally, we numerically evaluate the performances of the proposed waveform and demodulation schemes, comparing with the state-of-the-art algorithms. Simulation results demonstrate that communication rate can be increased by 30% given the selected frequencies as 24 and the number of sub-pulse as 5.