Joint Communications and Sensing Using Two Steerable Analog Antenna Arrays

Beam-steering has great potentials for joint communications and sensing, which is becoming a demanding feature on many emerging platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles and smart cars. Although beam-steering has been extensively studied for communications and radar sensing respectively, its application in the joint system is not straightforward due to different beamforming requirements by communications and sensing. In this paper, we propose a low-cost system framework which allows seamless operation of communications and sensing, using two small- size steerable analog antenna arrays. We provide system architecture, high-level protocols, detailed signal model, novel beamforming design and advanced 1D compressive sensing algorithms for joint communications and sensing. We also provide preliminary simulation results which validate the effectiveness of the proposed technique in resolving closely located objects.