Electronic engineering

Bistatic radar

Inverse synthetic aperture radar

Engineering

Artificial intelligence

Telecommunications

Waveform

Channel (broadcasting)

Transmitter

Synthetic aperture radar

Computer science

Radar imaging

Algorithm

Radar

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing

Due to the division of the transceiver, a bistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) gains many advantages, such as forward-looking imaging and powerful anti-interference capabilities. In the meantime, information sharing (e.g., positions and status) between the transmitter and the receiver is required for SAR imaging. This article addresses the co- use waveform design for SAR-dual-functional radar communication (SAR-DFRC). To this end, we embed information into a time-frequency spectrum of the phase coded signal, which can be a feasible solution to SAR-DFRC, bringing the possibility of realizing a light-weighted, miniaturized, low-costed, spectrum reusable, and more confidential system. A novel time-frequency spectrum shaping (TFSS) SAR-DFRC architecture based on short-time Fourier transform (STFT) is proposed for the first time. The weighted peak sidelobe level (WPSL) is considered a figure of merit for SAR imaging performance. Information is embedded by nulling the time-frequency spectrum of the waveform. Here, we develop the majorization-minimization PSL-TFSS (MMPSL-TFSS) algorithm to solve the resulting nonconvex NP-hard optimization problem. The designed waveform can ensure imaging performance and obtain high communication capacity in the meantime. Experimental and numerical results highlight the effectiveness of the proposed SAR-DFRC framework for imaging performance and the secure transition to communication information.

Joint Communication and SAR Waveform Design Method via Time-Frequency Spectrum Shaping