Radar Communications for Combating Mutual Interference of FMCW Radars

Commercial automotive radars used today are based on frequency modulated continuous wave signals due to the simple and robust detection method and good accuracy. However, the increase in both the number of radars deployed per vehicle and the number of such vehicles leads to mutual interference, cutting short future plans for autonomous driving and active safety functionality. We propose and analyze a radar communications (RadCom) approach to reduce this mutual interference while simultaneously offering communication functionality. We achieve this by frequency division multiplexing radar and communications, where communications is built on a decentralized carrier sense multiple access protocol and is used to adjust the timing of radar transmissions. Our simulation results indicate that radar interference can be significantly reduced, at no cost in radar accuracy.