Beamformer Design and Optimization for Joint Communication and Full-Duplex Sensing at mm-Waves

In this article, we study the joint communication and sensing (JCAS) paradigm in the context of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) mobile communication networks. We specifically address the JCAS challenges stemming from the full-duplex operation in monostatic orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) radars and from the co-existence of multiple simultaneous beams for communications and sensing purposes. To this end, we first formulate and solve beamforming optimization problems for hybrid beamforming based multiuser multiple-input and multiple-output JCAS systems. The cost function to be maximized is the beamformed power at the sensing direction while constraining the beamformed power at the communications directions, suppressing interuser interference and cancelling full-duplexing related self-interference (SI). We then also propose new transmitter and receiver beamforming solutions for purely analog beamforming based JCAS systems that maximize the beamforming gain at the sensing direction while controlling the beamformed power at the communications direction(s), cancelling the SI as well as eliminating the potential reflection from the communication direction and optimizing the combined radar pattern (CRP). Both closed-form and numerical optimization based formulations are provided. We analyze and evaluate the performance through extensive numerical experiments, and show that substantial gains and benefits in terms of radar transmit gain, CRP, and SI suppression can be achieved with the proposed beamforming methods.