Practical considerations for intra-pulse radar-embedded communications

This paper examines some of the practical aspects of waveform design for intra-pulse radar-embedded communications. Specifically, the generation of communication waveforms at the tag is considered for the case when forward scatter (i.e. multipath) is present thus altering the received version of the radar waveform at the tag and potentially producing a mismatch between the tag and desired receiver. Also, because it may be difficult to precisely determine the exact temporal length of the incident radar waveform (especially when multipath is present), the communication waveform design process may employ a larger than necessary temporal extent to ensure the incident waveform is completely captured. The impact of this temporal expansion of the communication waveforms is considered where it has been found to actually improve performance (in the absence of multipath). As such a rule-of-thumb for the total expanded time-bandwidth product is determined as a function of observed symbol error rate performance.