Vehicular Communications Over OFDM Radar Sensing in the 77 GHz mmWave Band

Radar detection and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication are two advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) functions used to improve the safety of the road users and their driving experience. However, the proliferation of radars on vehicles and the functionalities expected for V2X cause several issues like interference and insufficient communication flow. To address these challenges and optimize the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, the mutualization of communication and radar detection functions in the same component using millimeter-wave (mmWave) is proposed. As orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform seems to be the most suitable waveform to enable this cooperation, we propose to investigate the performance of OFDM radar compared to that of current frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar. We simulate and analyse the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the probability of detection (PD) of OFDM radar based on the parameters of a current mid-range automotive FMCW corner radar. We observe that FMCW radar has better SNR and PD than OFDM radar under these conditions. However, by applying a coherent integration scheme on receive, the results obtained show that good performance of OFDM radar can be achieved. To check the effect of the parameters used on the communication performance, we provide graphs of the Bit Error Rate (BER). These graphs show that the BER do not suffer from these parameters but rather that they can be beneficial to the communication.