Super-Resolution Range and Velocity Estimations With OFDM Integrated Radar and Communications Waveform

In the intelligent transportation system, it is an efficient way for the intelligent vehicle to use the integrated radar and communications system (IRCS) to obtain the range and velocity estimations of other vehicles and simultaneously communicate with other facilities, such as vehicles and base stations. In the IRCS, the transmitted waveform is the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) integrated radar and communications waveform that contains communications information. Due to the existence of communications information, the traditional range and velocity estimation methods in radar can not be directly utilized in the IRCS. Moreover, to improve the resolution of range and velocity estimations, the signal bandwidth and coherent processing interval (CPI) are usually required to be increased, which will result in the increase of system cost and the reduction of update rate. To solve these problems, a auto-paired super-resolution range and velocity estimation method is proposed by using the OFDM integrated radar and communications waveform. First, the communications information in the received signals is compensated. Then, the frequency smoothing is performed to reduce the correlation between the echoes reflected by different targets. Finally, the auto-paired super-resolution range and velocity estimations are obtained by exploiting the translational invariance structure of the underlying signal model in both frequency and pulse domains. Furthermore, Cramér-Rao bounds (CRBs) on range and velocity estimations with the OFDM integrated radar and communications waveform are derived. Several numerical examples are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.