Single Carrier-Frequency Division Multiple Access Radar: Waveform Design and Analysis

This paper proposes Single Carrier-FDMA radar, which is not only a solution to the shortcomings of OFDM radars but also offers improved Ambiguity Function and autocorrelation properties. Unlike OFDM, the proposed SC-FDMA radar (with interleaved subcarrier mapping) does not suffer from high peak to average power ratio (PAPR) issue and hence does not affect the efficiency of the transmitter in OFDM signals. Levanon and Mozeson's power amplifier. SC-FDMA utilizes all the benefits of single-carrier modulation, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and frequency domain equalization. The wideband characteristics of SC-FDMA are beneficial in achieving high range resolution for radar applications. The paper presents a complete architecture of SC-FDMA radar with interleaved subcarrier mapping. The proposed radar system is analyzed for its ambiguity function, auto-correlation properties, and PAPR. The performance of the proposed radar waveform is compared with those of the notable existing radar waveforms including a standard OFDM radar, CAN, Hadamard, and PWCIA. It is observed from the comparative analysis, that the proposed scheme outperforms OFDM and the other notable waveforms. The proposed work can be extended to develop multiple tasking radars as the different source signals can correspond to independent tasks to be performed simultaneously.