Dual-Use Signal Design for Radar and Communication via Pseudorandom Position and Phase Modulation

This paper proposes a new information modulation resorting to the pseudorandom position of communication sub-pulses and their phase in a designed unimodular signal for dual-function radar communication (DFRC) systems. Pseudorandom position modulation exploits the time randomness in the form of index modulation. Besides, the special phase of communication subpulses is utilized to decode the pseudorandom position and convey extral information simultaneously. In order to promise the radar detection ability, the peak sidelobe level (PSL) is considered as a figure of merit to minimize. At the same time, unimodular and radar subpulses phase constraints to comply with the current hardware technique and decode demand, are forced, respectively. This therefore yields a non-convex and NP-hard optimization problem with multiple constraints. Herein, a improved majorization-minimization frequency domain (MM-FD) method leads a way to find converged solution. Numerical results demonstrate the proposed pseudorandom position and phase modulation (P3M) and MM-FD method are capable of realizing high speed communication under the premise of ensuring acceptable radar performance.