Radar-Communications Waveform Co-Design Over-the-Air Using the WISCANet SDR Network

Many waveform co-design studies demonstrate theoretical performance enhancements but rarely provide a clear path toward implementing a tractable solution. To address this limitation, we developed a waveform co-design technique to maximize the joint radar-communications network's joint performance and a computationally tractable method for optimizing it. This waveform co-design technique is based on the theory of partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), which we solve using an approximate dynamic programming approach called nominal belief-state optimization (NBO). The POMDP framework's natural look-ahead feature allows us to trade between the short-term and long-term performance of both radar and communications tasks, which allows it to adapt to changes in system requirements and environmental conditions. Using the WISCANet over-the-air experimental radio testbed, we implement a simple joint radar-communications system and demonstrate this waveform design and optimization technique in a hardware-in-the-loop over-the-air demonstration. We further extend the problem by proposing a real-time waveform optimization solution using a Kalman Filter in a dynamic environment.