Deep Unfolding-Based Sensing-Assisted Channel Estimation With Imperfect Radar Arrays

In vehicle-to-everything (V2X) scenarios, the high dynamic characteristics of V2X environments impose significant challenges on communication channel estimation, where the emerging integrated sensing and communication technology could serve as a vital tool for achieving accurate channel estimation. This paper leverages radar-sensed angle information to assist in communication channel estimation and proposes a deep unfolding-based radar-assisted channel estimation network (Radar-CEnet). Specifically, for the radar module, to address the challenges posed by insufficient data in imperfect arrays, we employ a model-agnostic meta-learning with a convolutional neural network (MAML-CNN) approach to achieve high-precision direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. Then, the angle information obtained by the radar module, as prior knowledge, is used for channel estimation. Building on this, we design a novel soft-thresholding shrinkage function and propose the Radar-CEnet algorithm to efficiently estimate the sparse channel. Finally, we rigorously prove the convergence of the Radar-CEnet algorithm and demonstrate that it achieves a lower estimation error. Experimental results show that the proposed Radar-CEnet outperforms existing traditional methods and deep learning-based approaches in channel estimation performance. At an SNR of 20dB, the proposed Radar-CEnet method reduces the NMSE from –23.75dB to –27.15dB compared to the learning-based iterative soft-thresholding method, achieving an estimation accuracy improvement of approximately 54%.