Integrating TDD Communication and Radar Sensing in Co-Located Planar Array: A Genetic Algorithm Enabled Aperture Design

In this paper, we design interleaved transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) apertures co-located in one planar array for enabling joint communication and sensing. A fixed number of antennas in a rectangular configuration is allocable for the apertures, and we use a genetic algorithm to determine the allocation. We assume that the Tx aperture transmits one beam to an active communication user (downlink communication of time division duplex) and another beam for sensing the passive target, and the Rx aperture receives backscattered sensing signals simultaneously (full duplex). The array apertures' design criteria are based on the effect of interference mitigation when using linear beamforming. The optimal solution is determined when the side lobes for the beams are minimized at different scanning angles in the field of view. Our numerical results indicate that the near-optimal antenna allocation for the apertures does not perform uniformly for all desired beam directions, but yet, we could conclude a near-optimal solution based on the least discrepancy between the sidelobe suppression effects for the aperture patterns.