On the Capability of a Radar Network to Support Communications

Recent achievements in wireless technology could promote a new generation of radar networks, where the communication message for instance the reports on the detected targets, is embedded into the OFDM radar waveform. In this paper, the performance of a four-station network is assessed at the physical layer, in terms of bit error rate (BER) and throughput rate. On the one hand, we analyse the system performance w.r.t. the antenna pattern on reception and on the other hand we study the effects of different network or antenna set-ups. We consider 2 different design cases: (i) same directional radar antenna for transmission and reception and (ii) an additional omni-directional antenna at reception to support communications. Hints for an intelligent data fusion are provided. None of the traditional radar specific issues have been addressed.