Integrated Localization and Communication aided Multi-USV Network

Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) have been recognized as a promising technology to be used in a plethora of maritime applications. In order to support system intelligence and autonomy, continuously tracking and exchanging information in the dynamically changing marine environments are required for USVs. However, these requirements in turn lead to high cost of both spectrum and hardware in USVs. In order to alleviate this issue, an integrated localization and communication assisted multi-USV network is conceived in this paper. Specifically, an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based dual-functional radar-communication system is designed for enabling radar detection, channel estimation, as well as data detection at each USV. Then, closed-form equations and a demodulation-and-forward (DeF) strategy exploiting full spatial diversity gain are provided for the implementations of localization and data transmissions, respectively. Finally, the system performance is evaluated by simulations, showing that the proposed system is capable of attaining accurate localization and reliable communications in face of hostile marine environments.