Efficient multidimensional parameter estimation for joint wideband radar and communication systems based on OFDM

In this paper we study the parameter estimation problem of an OFDM based joint wideband SIMO radar and communication system. The parameters to be estimated are time delays, relative velocities, and angle of arrival (DoA) pairs of radar targets. Due to the wideband assumption the received signal on different subcarriers are incoherent and therefore cannot fully exploit the frequency diversity of the OFDM waveform. In order to estimate the parameters jointly and coherently on different subcarriers, we propose an interpolation based coherent multidimensional parameter estimation framework, where firstly the wideband system model is transformed into an equivalent narrowband system model, and then multidimensional parameter estimation algorithms can be applied. More precisely, a wideband R-D periodogram is introduced as a benchmark algorithm and a high-resolution R-D Wideband Unitary Tensor-ESPRIT algorithm is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed coherent parameter estimation method significantly outperforms the direct application of multidimensional parameter estimation algorithms to the wideband model.